WORLD / Middle East
Iraq parliament speaker removed
(AP)
Updated: 2007-06-11 20:09
BAGHDAD - Parliament voted Monday in a closed session to remove the
speaker after a series of scandals involving the controversial lawmaker,
legislators said. Mahmoud al-Mashhadani will be replaced by another Sunni
Arab, they said.
Iraqis gather around a burning patrol car in Samarra, 95 kilometers (60
miles) north of Baghdad, Monday, June 11, 2007. [AP]
The US military, meanwhile, said three American soldiers were killed and
six were wounded, along with an interpreter, Sunday when a suicide car
bomber brought down a section bridge south of Baghdad on Iraq's main
north-south artery.
"The efforts to clear the road continue," said Lt. Col. Randy Martin, a
US military spokesman.
Al-Mashhadani's behavior has repeatedly embarrassed the Sunni Arab
partners in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's coalition government. Many
of the house's 275 legislators viewed his behavior as unbecoming and, on
occasion, erratic.
Three lawmakers said the Iraqi Accordance Front, parliament's largest
Sunni Arab bloc with 44 of the house's 275 seats, has pledged to offer a
replacement for al-Mashhadani within a week. They spoke on condition of
anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
Al-Mashhadani, a former physician and an Islamist, is a member of the
Accordance Front and will retain his seat in parliament, according to the
decision. He did not attend Monday's session, which was chaired by his
deputy, Shiite Khaled al-Attiyah.
The speaker has been in trouble for sometime.
Last year, he barely survived a campaign by Shiite and Kurdish
politicians to remove him after he said Iraqis who killed American troops
should be celebrated as heroes. Last month, he slapped a fellow Sunni
lawmaker in the face and called him "scum" at the end of a raucous
session.
An incident on Sunday appeared to have been taken by lawmakers as the
last straw.
Al-Mashhadani got into a shouting match with lawmaker Firyad Mohammed
Omar, a Shiite Turkoman, when he complained to the speaker about what he
said was the heavy handedness of his personal security guards.
Al-Mashhadani responded by heaping abuse at Omar, who complained to
fellow legislators that he was also assaulted by al-Mashhadani's guards
The move came as Britain's next prime minister met with Iraqi leaders in
a surprise visit following promises to study his country's participation
in the conflict as it faces growing opposition at home. Treasury chief
Gordon Brown, who is to succeed Tony Blair later this month, was on a
one-day fact-finding mission, British officials said.
Meanwhile, engineers were at the scene of Sunday's suicide car bombing on
the bridge, using bulldozers and other heavy equipment to clear the
highway, Baghdad's main north-south artery, which was partially blocked
by debris from the overpass. An Iraqi interpreter also was wounded in the
attack, according to the statement that gave the casualty toll.
US armored vehicles provided cover fire from their cannons after the
bombing, which occurred in the area dubbed the "triangle of death" for
its frequent Sunni insurgent attacks.
The blast dropped one of two sections of the "Checkpoint 20" bridge
crossing over the north-south expressway, six miles east of Mahmoudiya.
It appeared that a northbound suicide driver stopped and detonated his
vehicle beside a support pillar, said Lt. Col. Garry Bush, an Army
munitions officer who was in the convoy, which also carried an Associated
Press reporter and photographer and arrived two minutes after the blast.
A US Army checkpoint and a tent structure, apparently a rest area, fell
into the shattered concrete. The crossing was believed to have been
closed to all but military traffic at the time.
Security guards with private security firm Armor Group International, all
ex-military, and others in a passing convoy rushed to the ruins. They
found a scene of confusion and worked with a US Army quick reaction force
for some 45 minutes to pull trapped men from the rubble, scrambling over
the fallen concrete.
"When that size blast went off, everyone was in shock," said one of the
first atop the rubble, Jackie Smith, 53, a former lieutenant colonel now
working as a civilian Army munitions expert.
He said he saw what he believed was the engine block of a truck ��
apparently what remained of the suicide vehicle.
Soon the outpost sergeant in charge was organizing a search for his
missing men, Smith said. The Armor Group team climbed up with first-aid
kits, stretchers and other aid.
With the Army's quick reaction force, they struggled to lift concrete
shards off the men, pinned along the slope of what was once a roadway. At
one point, a Bradley armored vehicle with a tow chain pulled a slab off a
pinned victim to free him.
Then a shout went up, "Morphine! Morphine!" and a black T-shirt-clad
Briton administered painkiller to the freed man.
"Another poor fellow looked crushed beneath a concrete slab," said Donald
Campbell, a 40-year-old from Inverness, Scotland.
During the rescue, US armored vehicles opened up with suppressing fire,
possibly having spotted movement in the surrounding countryside, flat and
baking in 100-degree-plus Fahrenheit temperatures.
Traffic was delayed for over an hour until a medevac helicopter landed to
take aboard the wounded, and traffic slowly resumed under the remaining
section of the span.
Iraqi police said the overpass was a vital link across the highway for
villagers in the area because the other spans have been taken over by US
forces. A police officer in nearby Iskandariyah, speaking on condition of
anonymity because of security concerns, said a curfew had been imposed on
vehicles and pedestrians after the attack and earlier bombings of a
mosque and a Sunni political party's headquarters that caused some damage
but no casualties.
In Baghdad, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, whose forces control the area of the
bombing, spoke at length about US efforts to draw Sunnis into the
security forces.
"There are tribal sheiks out there who say 'Hey, just allow me to be the
local security force. I don't care what you call me. ... You can call me
whatever you want. Just give me the right training and equipment and I'll
secure my area.' And that's the direction we're moving out there," the
Third Infantry Division commander said.
In a meeting with reporters, Lynch said contacts with the Sunnis, who
make up the bulk of the insurgency, were a matter of pragmatism.
"They say: 'We hate you because you are an occupier, but we hate al-Qaida
worse and we hate the Persians (Iranians) even worse' ... you can't
ignore that whole population," Lynch said.
His division, he said, had lost 43 soldiers since the beginning of the US
troop surge on Feb. 14.
The deaths raised to at least 3,509 members of the US military who have
died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated
Press count.
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