Baghdad - Iraqi Parliament Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani has
refused to resign despite being suspended from parliament over an
assault incident, Iraq media reported Wednesday.
Iraq's parliament had last Monday voted to give al-Mashhadani a
'long vacation' after Al-Mashhadani's bodyguards allegedly beat a
deputy with no intervention from the speaker.
The Sunni Iraqi Accordance Front (IAF) was given one week to name
his replacement.
Al-Mashhadani called the parliament's decision 'a violation of the
law,' threatening to go to court if the parliament stands by its
position. 'I refuse to resign,' he was quoted as saying by Voices of
Iraq news agency Wednesday.
The MP who was assaulted,Friad Mohammed Omar, belongs to the
Kurdish Alliance List.
The Kurdish deputy and the bodyguards had a verbal argument at
first, but then their argument turned violent when the two sides
started a physical fight.
'Is it logical that the head of the parliament be suspended
because of a mistake of one of his bodyguards?' wondered
al-Mashhadani at a press conference Tuesday. He described his
suspension as 'the dictatorship of the majority.'
The parliament, meanwhile, has decided to leave First Deputy
Speaker Sheikh Khaled Attia in charge of parliament's affairs,
pending the naming of a replacement.
The IAF, the party that nominated al-Mashhadani, a Sunni Muslim,
is the bloc that is authorized to name his substitute.
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.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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