Jul 19, 2007, 12:43 GMT
Baghdad - Iraqi Parliament Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani returned to parliament and presided over its 43rd session Thursday after an absence for over a month amid growing calls that he be sacked, independent Voices of Iraq reported.
The Sunni Iraqi Accordance Front (IAF), which al-Mashhadani belongs to, announced earlier it had ended its two-week boycott of parliament and that it would attend Thursday's session.
Parliamentary deputy Alaa Tahsin al-Sadoun from the IAF told Voices of Iraq that al-Mashhadani's return was a result of the front's demands to parliament to reconsider its earlier request.
Sadoun explained that the front had not yet decided who would replace al-Mashhadani, adding that the issue is currently under discussion.
The IAF, which occupies 44 seats in the 275-seat house, suspended its parliamentary membership on June 30 in protest against the arrest warrant of Culture Minister As'ad al-Hashemi and the ouster of al- Mashhadani.
Al-Hashemi, who is an IAF member, had been accused of being involved in the the assassination of two sons of Mathal al-Alusi, an Iraqi parliamentarian from the Sunni Umma Party.
The IAF called for a neutral committee to investigate the killing of al-Alusi's sons, cancelling the arrest warrant, releasing the arrested bodyguards of the IAF members of parliament and returning al-Mashhadani to his position as speaker.
In May, a number of deputies demanded that al-Mashhadani be sacked after his bodyguards assaulted a member of parliament from the Shiite Unified Iraqi Coalition (UIC), the largest bloc with 115 seats.
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