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.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
USA
Your Talkback on this Story