Iraqi parliament opens to sound of mortar explosions

Six weeks after Iraqis cast ballots in the country's first democratic elections, the new parliament has finally met. But the ceremonial opening was immediately targeted by mortar attacks from insurgents.

Six weeks after Iraqis cast ballots in the country's first democratic elections, the new parliament has finally met. But the ceremonial opening in Baghdad yesterday immediately became the target of mortar attacks from insurgents.

During a ceremony that lasted about two hours, members of the new body took turns to pledge to work towards stability in Iraq, while windows rattled and lights flickered in the building as mortar shells struck the fortified Green Zone compound. No casualties were reported in the attack which was later claimed by al-Qa'ida's Iraqi wing. Each of the 275 MPs was eventually sworn in to rounds of applause.

As the parliament met, police blocked many main roads and fired weapons into the air to keep residents at a distance. Large numbers of US helicopters and warplanes were also deployed.

The assembly's first debate was an anti-climax. Rival parliamentary blocs failed to agree over the shape of a new government. Iraq's Shia and Kurdish communities, who together won at least 215 of the 275 seats in the new parliament in the elections on 30 January, have been arguing over the country's future for weeks at closed-door meetings.

Neither group can appoint ministers and govern without the other; Iraq's rules require a two-thirds majority of voters to appoint a president, who must then form a government.

The Kurdish bloc is insisting on control over the 100,000-strong peshmerga militia as well as guarantees on the future status of Kirkuk, the disputed oil-rich city in northern Iraq which Kurds consider part of their ancestral homeland.

The Kurds have also demanded that the Shia, led by the clerical hierarchy in the holy city of Najaf, bring the 40-seat United Iraqi coalition, led by Iyad Allawi, the interim Prime Minister, into the government. Leaders of the Shia coalition have repeatedly snubbed Mr Allawi, a secular Shia with close ties to the US.

Despite the underlying tensions, disagreements and frustrations, Iraqi politicians hailed the day as an important one in the country's rebirth. "Iraq has liberated itself after shedding rivers of blood," the Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani, Iraq's most likely next president, told the 260 or so parliamentarians gathered.

Sheikh Ghazi al-Yawer, Iraq's current President and a member of the restless Sunni Arab minority, urged legislators to draw his embattled community into the political process. Sunni Arabs largely boycotted the election and are under-represented in the parliament. "We ask God to give us the courage to preserve the rights of those who did not participate," he told his colleagues. "We are not divided into winners and losers. We are either all winner or all losers."

* Iraq could soon become "the biggest corruption scandal in history" if its newly elected government does not implement efficient measures to combat institutionalised bribery and fraud, a report warns. The US-led former coalition provisional authority comes under fire in this year's Transparency International study for mishandling the post-war reconstruction process and encouraging corruption to become rife in the management of Iraqi oil revenues and awarding of construction contracts. "The US has been a poor role model in how to keep corrupt practices at bay," the report says.