Iraqi parliament speaker likely to leave office

Jun 11, 2007, 18:15 GMT

Baghdad - Parliament in Iraq on Monday voted to give its speaker, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani a 'long vacation' and gave the Sunni Iraqi Accordance Front (IAF) one week to name his replacement, a news report said.

In Monday's session 113 members of parliament voted for the move which comes after al-Mashhadani's bodyguards assaulted a deputy without any interference on the speaker's part.

They decided to leave First Deputy Speaker Sheikh Khaled Attia in charge of parliament's affairs, pending the naming of a replacement, an Iraqi parliament media source told the independent Voices of Iraq news agency.

The IAF, the party that nominated al-Mashhadani, a Sunni Muslim, is the bloc that is authorized to name a substitute for al- Mashhadani, Kurdistan Coalition member Mahmoud Othman told the news agency.

The Kurdistan Coalition is the second-largest bloc in the 275-seat Iraqi parliament, with 55 seats. The IAF has 44 seats, making it the third-largest.

The IAF, of which al-Mashhadani is a member, had asked to be given 24 hours to consider the matter, Othman added. The party appointed him speaker of the first elected Iraqi parliament about a year ago.

Al-Mashhadani's bodyguards allegedly beat and verbally attacked Friad Mohammed Omar, a member of parliament from the Shiite Unified Iraqi Coalition (UIC), the largest bloc in parliament with 115 seats, while he was passing near al-Mashhadani at the parliament's entrance gate.

Sheikh Jalal al-Din al-Saghir, a leading figure in the Shiite Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC) and member of parliament from the UIC, said the IAF had the right to replace al-Mashhadani and name a replacement.

The UIC inside the parliament is determined to have al-Mashhadani changed. The incident was not the first time his bodyguards have assaulted deputies, said Saghir, noting 'the bodyguards had beaten two members of parliament belonging to the UIC before.'