Key laws or no, Iraq’s parliament takes a break

Legislators joked and chatted, showing no sense of urgency about breaking a deadlock between Sunni and Shiite Muslims over national reconciliation as Iraq’s parliament held its final session Monday before a monthlong recess.

Adjourning until Sept. 4, despite complaints from some American critics, the parliament failed to pass laws concerning oil investment and revenue-sharing among regions, the re-integration of former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime into government, and provincial elections.

Men in suits, Shiite clerics in white turbans and black robes, women in Western blouses and others shrouded in veils participated in the session at the 275-seat National Assembly. Some gripped their black leather briefcases in the lobby of the fortified building, which bore posters of Mohammed Awad, the lawmaker killed in an April suicide bombing at the parliament, and pictures of three slain building guards.

The lawmakers had no expectations for a dramatic reversal of the situation. Parliament had already extended its session for a month in an unsuccessful attempt to pass the legislation that the U.S. Congress has designated as benchmarks of Iraq’s progress in healing its bloody sectarian divide.

Four weeks later, Iraq’s politics appear as acrimonious. The 44-seat Sunni political bloc Tawafiq was boycotting the government and threatening to pull its six members from the Cabinet permanently if Prime Minister Nouri Maliki failed to meet its demands on the dissolution of militias and the release of innocent detainees. Leading Shiite lawmakers representing the majority population long oppressed under Saddam Hussein suspected that the Sunnis simply wanted to bring down the government of Maliki, a Shiite.

“The problem in Iraq is, how can we make a decision that serves all Iraqis by not just looking at one’s own interests,” said Aqil Abed Chali, a professor of political science at Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. “Regretfully, there is a narrow-mindedness.”

Such was the state of affairs when 180 lawmakers walked into parliament Monday. Some rued the lack of trust among the factions and their own standing as bit players in a drama orchestrated by power brokers outside the legislature. By the end of the three-hour session, only 130 members remained in the hall.

Mohammed Khazaali, a member of the Shiite Al Fadila al Islamiya, or Islamic Virtue Party, said lawmakers spent days endorsing international protocols on olive oil, tobacco and clean air -- trivial measures, he said, that were approved for lack of consensus on key issues.

Kurdish lawmaker Layla Qahraman recalled frustration over too many sessions spent striking down Hussein-era laws. She noted a session last week in which lawmakers debated whether women should wear veils when they play sports.

Parliament member Wael Abdul Latif lamented the assembly’s seeming irrelevance, pointing out the failure of any important Iraqi leaders who head political blocs to come to the legislature, including his own party leader, Iyad Allawi, and Shiite luminaries such as Ibrahim Jafari and Abdelaziz Hakim.

“We know the democracy being practiced in Iraq has nothing to do with the parliament,” said Latif, a judge, who described decisions as being made in the “shadowy corners.”

Nothing was more contentious than the proposed oil law, which elicited an outcry from moderate Sunnis who see the legislation as giving Kurds too much control over contracts in northern Iraq with international corporations. Also opposed were some Shiites and more-nationalist Sunnis, who complained of the possible ceding of Iraq’s resources to foreigners. The Kurds, too, were concerned about the measure in the end, worried that last-minute changes were intended to dilute their rights regarding contracts and revenue-sharing.

Most of the drama played outside the parliament on Monday as Tawafiq released a statement accusing Maliki of not being serious about efforts to end sectarianism. The statement was a response to Maliki’s spokesman, who had accused Sunnis of political blackmail with their threat to resign from the government if their demands were not met.

“It seems that the prime minister does not have the intention to handle this or bear any responsibility. He is simply closing the doors of reconciliation and reform,” the Sunni statement said.

Haider Abadi, a Shiite parliament member considered close to Maliki, reiterated accusations that the Sunnis were trying to break up the government.

“We are convinced whatever we do they’ll keep doing this to send a message to Washington. They will use any minor incident, and Iraq has many minor incidents,” Abadi said.

The Sunni bloc’s salvo was sparked by a verbal disagreement July 23 in which Maliki and his Sunni vice president, Tariq Hashimi, said they wished they didn’t work together, Abadi said.

From the Shiite side, Nassar Rubaie, the head of anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada Sadr’s bloc in parliament, lashed out over the parliament’s performance in July.

“We didn’t achieve anything. This very simply clarified the depth of the political and security problems,” Rubaie said.

The lawmaker warned that his bloc would support Maliki only on a case-by-case basis. “I see a very hard time for the government in the future,” he said before heading to a meeting with colleagues.

A U.S. diplomat cautioned that the country’s political system was faltering but that there was no quick fix.

“Politically, there isn’t going to be a breakthrough,” said the diplomat, who asked to remain anonymous because he was not stating official policy. “There isn’t going to be the sun comes up one day and everybody loves each other. They are going to muddle through, but in this part of the world, a lot of governments just muddle through for years.”

In violence Monday, a minibus blew up by Tayaran Square in central Baghdad, killing at least six people. The attack came less than 24 hours after Iraqis rejoiced over their soccer team’s first victory in the Asian Cup tournament.

Twenty-five bodies were discovered around Baghdad, 18 of them in the Karkh district.

The U.S. military announced that three soldiers were killed Thursday and a Marine was killed Monday in fighting in Al Anbar province. Adding the Monday death to an earlier count on icasualties.org raises to 3,653 the American troop death toll in Iraq since 2003.

ned.parker@latimes.com

Times staff writers Said Rifai, Saif Hameed, Saif Rasheed, Zeena Kareem and Wael Alhafith contributed to this report.