Iraqi House finally passes new budget, approves amnesty law
14 February 2008 (The Daily Star)
Iraqi lawmakers achieved a major breakthrough on Wednesday, passing the 2008 budget after weeks of delay and an amnesty law that could lead to the release of thousands of prisoners from the country’s jails. Parliament also passed a provincial powers law that will define ties between Baghdad and local authorities. It allows for holding provincial elections by October 1 in which parties who boycotted previous polls could win some local power.
“I’d like to congratulate the … government and people of Iraq for these significant accomplishments,” US Ambassador Ryan Crocker told reporters.
Scores of MPs had stormed out of the legislature on Tuesday evening, blocking a vote on the bills in a sign of the deep distrust between the country’s Shiite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish politicians. Some MPs said Parliament should be disbanded and new elections held.
But Parliament convened again on Wednesday and despite a walkout by some MPs, managed to overcome a row over voting procedures to pass the three measures as a package.
“We have proven today that Iraqis are just one bloc,” said Speaker Mahmoud Mashhadani, a Sunni Arab.
Washington has pressed Iraqi leaders to pass legislation to help heal sectarian divisions that have festered during a Sunni Arab insurgency against US forces and savage violence between majority Shiites and minority Sunnis. The laws passed on Wednesday are not among several key benchmarks sought by the United States, but the measures, especially the amnesty law, would still form an important component of reconciliation, US officials have said.
The main Sunni Arab bloc, the Accordance Front, said passage of the amnesty law would help accelerate its return to the Shiite-led Cabinet of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. The Front, which quit the government in August, has long demanded the release of security detainees.
US forces and Iraqi authorities each hold more than 23,000 prisoners, many of them Sunni Arabs behind the insurgency against the American-backed government that erupted after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
“We have no doubt that passing this law will have a remarkably positive effect in speeding up the return of the Accordance Front to the government,” said Salim al-Jubouri, a legislator and spokesman for the bloc.
The government has said prisoners under investigation, on trial or convicted could be eligible to be freed. The pardon, however, would exclude those convicted of major crimes such as murder. It only applies to prisoners in Iraqi custody.
Sunni Arab MPs said inmates who had spent longer than six months in prison without being charged would be freed. So would prisoners who had been charged but not appeared before a judge for a year.
MPs had also spent weeks wrangling bitterly over the level of spending on the largely autonomous Kurdish region.
Some Shiite and Sunni Arab legislators had said Kurdistan should get less money based on current population estimates.
Officials had said the prolonged delay in approving the $48 billion budget was holding up vital spending at a time when the United States is urging the government to jumpstart the economy to take advantage of falls in violence.
In recent days, leaders of the political blocs agreed to vote on all three measures as a package because of mutual suspicion that if one was voted on separately and approved, the faction that wanted that most would renege on the rest.
Parliament also passed a law last month that will allow former members of Saddam’s Baath Party to regain their jobs in the government and military, a key demand of Sunni Arabs who were dominant under the former dictator.
But Maliki’s government has struggled to make headway on other key laws, especially legislation that would equitably share the country’s vast oil reserves.
US Attorney General Michael Mukasey said during a visit to Baghdad Wednesday that Iraqis are “firmly committed” to the rule of law.
“I’m impressed and encouraged what I have seen here,” Mukasey said on his first trip to Iraq since he took office in November 2007. Iraqis “are committed to the independence of the judiciary and are fully committed to having law being the only influence on the outcome of their cases,” he added.
Mukasey said he had met with Crocker and the US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, as well as some of the more than 200 Justice Department staff serving at the US mission in Iraq. He had also held talks, he said, with Chief Justice Madhat al-Mahmood and two other senior judges, whom he did not identify.
“All three are remarkable men whose leadership is making an impact across Iraq,” Mukasey said. “They face many obstacles each day in carrying out their duties as agents for the law in the face of many dangers.
“The judges were emphatic in their recognition not only of the importance of the rule of law but also the independence of the judiciary,” he added.
In an earlier statement released by his office in Washington, the attorney general said that his visit to the wartorn country was aimed at bolstering “efforts to establish the rule of law in Iraq.” - Agencies (Iraq Updates)