Juan Cole/Informed Comment: Monday, April 04, 2005

Speaker of Parliament Elected amid Rancor

Two more US servicemen were killed by guerrilla attacks over the weekend, and the Green Zone took mortar fire near the Iraqi parliament again, during a recess, on Sunday. This news comes a day after a car bomb and mortar attack on Abu Ghraib prison, left 44 US troops wounded along with over a dozen Iraqis.

Enough security to allow a meeting of the parliament was achieved, however, only by closing major bridges in and out of Baghdad and placing restrictions on the circulation of drivers in the capital. Member of parliament and cleric, Shaikh Hussein al-Sadr, warned that such measures invonvenience Baghdadi shopkeepers and others and could produce dislike for the parliament if they continued (ash-Sharq al-Awsat). Meanwhile, journalists complained about being locked out of the proceedings. And women deputies, a little less than a third of the total, complained that they were not being offered any important cabinet or executive posts in the negotiations for the formation of a government.