"Iraq is quiet for now"
You can't be serious!
At Least 24 People Killed Across Iraq
By PATRICK QUINN , 09.12.2006, 04:30 PM
Violence killed at least two dozen people across Iraq on Tuesday, including six who died when a car bomb blew up in western Baghdad.
The attack also wounded 18 people in Mansour, an upscale neighborhood that has been the scene of repeated bombings and kidnappings.
Northeast of the capital, at least four people were killed and two dozen wounded when a roadside bomb exploded next to a market in the town of Middadiyah.
And in the northern city of Mosul, gunmen attacked and killed four Kurds and injured another, said Ahmed Abdul-Aziz, a doctor at Jumhouri Hospital.
Police in the Anbar province capital of Ramadi, meanwhile, reported that three people were killed in an explosion in the city west of Baghdad.
The violence came as deputies argued over a bill that Sunni Arabs fear will split Iraq into three sectarian and ethnic cantons.
A group of lawmakers tried Tuesday to take advantage of the unpopularity of U.S. troops among many Shiite and Sunni legislators to seek approval of a resolution setting a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops - something the Shiite-dominated government has refused to do.
Sponsored by supporters of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and some Sunni Arabs, the resolution managed to gather 104 signatures in the 275-member parliament before it was effectively shelved by being sent to a committee for review.
That committee will need at least six months to examine the resolution and present its findings to parliament. If it were to be approved, such a resolution would be binding on the government.
"We do not want another kitchen in which decisions are cooked away from the representatives of the people and away from the hearing of the Iraqi people," complained Falah al-Mishaal, the Shiite legislator who presented the resolution.
No headway was made on an even more contentious proposal: legislation that would set in place the mechanism for establishing autonomous regions as part of a federal Iraq. Debate on the matter was put off until Sept. 19.
Sunni Arabs have vehemently opposed the legislation. Both the north, already controlled by Kurds, and the south, where Shiites are dominant, are rich in oil, and Sunnis fear they will end up squeezed into Baghdad and Iraq's western provinces, which have no natural resources.
"People are more preoccupied now with the deteriorating security situation and in order to have federalism, we should have democracy first. But with this deterioration in security, it difficult to achieve federalism," argued Naseer al-Ani, a member of largest Sunni Arab political group.
Although federalism is part of Iraq's constitution, and there is already an autonomous Kurdish region in the north, legislation and a referendum would be needed to turn Iraq into a full federation.
Iraq's most powerful Shiite politician and leader of its largest party, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, called on fellow clerics to support the bill.
The coalition al-Hakim leads in parliament, the United Iraqi Alliance, submitted the bill last week. It would be the first step in creating a separate autonomous state in the south much like the region run by Kurds in the north.
Associated Press writers Hamid Ahmed and Bushra Juhi in Baghdad, and Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Cairo, Egypt, contributed to this report.
Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed
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