Iraq’s fractious parliament squeezed its abrasive speaker out of a job and authorized non-US troops to stay for another half-year on Tuesday in a pair of high-stakes moves in its final session of the year.
Under heavy pressure from Shiite and Kurdish lawmakers, Sunni speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani resigned on the losing end of a long-running power struggle. Lawmakers applauded his announcement, quickly approved it. then passed a measure allowing Britain’s 4,000 troops and several smaller contingents from other countries to stay through July.
“I do believe that I was faithfully doing good work,” he said in his address to the chamber where he often offended other lawmakers. “If I caused hurt to you, I ask your forgiveness.”
Al-Mashhadani has clashed repeatedly with Kurdish and Shiite lawmakers in recent years.
The enmity reached its peak last week in a shouting match over the detention of the journalist who threw his shoes at US President George W. Bush.
Within a half-hour of his resignation, parliament approved the troops measure in a voice vote — just a week before the UN mandate authorizing foreign troops was to expire.
The new measure will allow non-US troops to stay through and assist US troops until the end of July. The Americans can remain until the end of 2011 under a separate security agreement.
The authorization for foreign troops became entangled in al-Mashhadani’s quarrel with Kurdish and Shiite lawmakers last week, when he hurled abuse during a session and threatened to resign. His opponents ultimately forced him to keep his word. In turn, al-Mashhadani tried to delay until Jan. 7 the vote on the foreign troops resolution — a week after next Tuesday’s expiration of the UN mandate.
Meanwhile, Salvadoran President Tony Saca announced on Tuesday he would withdraw Salvadoran troops from Iraq after Dec. 31, pulling out the only remaining soldiers from Latin America.
Five of El Salvador’s soldiers have been killed and more than 20 have been wounded since the country deployed troops there in 2003.
It currently has 200 soldiers based near the southeastern Shiite city of Kut.
Saca said last month that Iraqi President Jalal Talibani had written him a letter asking him to keep Salvadoran troops in Iraq. But he said the Iraqi government never followed up.
Britain has already said it plans to withdraw its 4,000 troops from southern Iraq by the end of May.
Australia, Estonia and Romania also have troops in Iraq.
Meanwhile, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was due to hold talks yesterday with Ankara on ways to fight Turkish separatist Kurdish rebels based in northern Iraq.
Maliki was to meet Turkish President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
On Tuesday, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, gave fresh assurances that both Baghdad and the Kurdish administration of northern Iraq were determined to purge the region of the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
“We, the Iraqi Kurds, will no longer allow armed people from any Kurdish group to use our territory to carry out attacks on Turkey or Iran,” Talabani said in an interview with Turkey’s Aksam daily published yesterday.
“We will take the necessary measures,” he said, adding that Kurdish parties in northern Iraq would soon convene a meeting to issue a joint appeal to the PKK to abandon its armed struggle.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS