Historic Iraq parliament opens amid bombing

Rawya Rageh, Baghdad

US President George W Bush called the session a bright moment for Iraq, but said there was no timetable for withdrawing US troops.

The parliament’s 275 members, elected during January 30 balloting, convened in an auditorium amid tight security in the heavily-guarded Green Zone with US helicopter gunships hovering overhead. “I congratulate the Iraqis for their assembly,” Mr Bush said in Washington.

Minutes before the assembly convened, at least a half-dozen explosions detonated a few hundred yards away. The US military said two mortar rounds landed inside the zone but caused no injuries.

After yesterday’s session ended, another mortar shell hit an empty building in central Baghdad’s Karradah neighbourhood, setting the two-storey structure on fire, police and witnesses said. There were no reports of injuries.

The lawmakers opened with a reading of verses from the Koran. Iraqi Chief Justice Medhat al Mahmoud then administered the oath to the assembled deputies.

“It is a great day in Iraqi history that its elected representatives meet,” said Fuad Masoum, a Kurdish delegate. “This day coincides with a painful memory that has many meanings. Today, on this occasion, we celebrate the inauguration of parliament after the fall of this regime.”

Yesterday marked the anniversary of the Saddam Hussein-ordered chemical attack in 1988 on the northern Kurdish town of Halabja, an attack that killed 5,000 people.

Iraqi leaders have not yet agreed on a coalition government, and the leader of the Shi’ite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, cleric Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, said his alliance hoped to “form a government whose motto is to serve the Iraqi people, a government of national unity and reconciliation”.

Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish leader who will probably become Iraq’s next president, said deputies “all have a duty to achieve real national unity”.

The alliance and a Kurdish coalition agreed last week to form a coalition government with Shi’ite politician Ibrahim al-Jaafari as prime minister. In return, Mr Talabani will become Iraq’s first Kurdish president, though the presidency is a largely ceremonial post.

The US-led coalition has come under pressure as Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi announced plans to withdraw the country’s 3,000 troops in September.