BBC: First meeting for Iraq parliament (3 months after gen. election)

[mogster]

The new Iraqi parliament has held its inaugural session, three months after the general election.
The meeting had been brought forward by three days from its postponed date, but the BBC's Jim Muir in Iraq says this is not a sign of accord.

Unresolved differences between the parties and wrangling over the top jobs are likely to delay a new government.
(...)
The much delayed session lasted just 30 minutes as wrangling over power meant members were not even be able to elect a speaker, because that job is part of a wider power-sharing package.
(...)
Iraqis will have to wait at least weeks longer before they can expect a new government, our correspondent adds.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4811574.stm
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Iraqi govt. page:
http://www.iraqigovernment.org/index_en.htm

[cal04]

1. Iraq parliament meets

Iraq's parliament met briefly on Thursday for the first time since it was elected in December but talks on forming a national unity government are deadlocked and the session did little to halt a slide to civil war. What might have been the crowning moment of a U.S.-backed political process that began with the invasion three years ago to overthrow Saddam Hussein, was reduced to 20 minutes of protocol that did little but meet a constitutional deadline.

"It is just something we have to get off our backs," one senior parliamentarian told Reuters. "Then we'll go and sit at the negotiating table and yell at each other." With no agreement among Shi'ites, Sunnis, Kurds and others on the posts of speaker, president, prime minister or cabinet members, no substantive business can be conducted.

Even the keynote address by Adnan Pachachi, the oldest member and acting speaker, was cut short by a powerful Shi'ite Islamist leader when Pachachi, a secular Sunni, launched into a criticism of "sectarian domination" -- a clear attack on the past year's rule by the Shi'ite-led interim government. "We have to tell the world there will be no civil war among the Iraqi people. The risk is there," the patrician Pachachi, who was foreign minister in the 1960s, told the 275-seat chamber in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone government compound.


(snip)
JAAFARI DEFIANT
Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, whose nomination by fellow Shi'ites to a second term is blocking any agreement with Kurds, Sunnis and secular leaders, insisted he had the right as the elected choice of the biggest group to hang on to his job. "I did not get here as part of a deal so I cannot be pushed aside as part of a deal," Jaafari told Reuters. He earlier told a news conference: "If my people ask me to step aside I will."

http://go.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=1136122§ion=news&src=rss/uk/worldNews

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11853070/#storyContinued