Iraqi legislators agree on one thing: Speaker must go

Iraq’s legislators, under pressure from Washington to produce political progress that might expedite an end to the war, demonstrated Monday their determination to take up issues important to them: They voted to oust their speaker for rude behavior.

Declaring the latest outburst by the leader of parliament to be the final straw, the Shiite Muslim-led body decided to request that Mahmoud Mashadani, a Sunni Muslim, be ousted. The move will not affect the balance of power in the lawmaking body, which requires that he be replaced by another Sunni. However, it pointed up yet again the parliament’s focus on internal squabbles rather than on national laws deemed crucial to bringing stability to Iraq.

As lawmakers gathered in a closed session to debate Mashadani’s behavior, which has included slapping a fellow legislator and cursing him on the floor of the parliament, the U.S. military reported that violence had killed three more Americans and destroyed a strategic bridge. In addition, at least 17 Iraqis were found dead across the capital, police said.

The three U.S. soldiers died Sunday night when a bomber blew himself up beneath a highway overpass on which a U.S. checkpoint was set up south of Baghdad, the military announced Monday.

Northeast of Baghdad in Diyala province, insurgents on Monday blew up a bridge used by U.S. and other foreign troops. There were no casualties immediately reported in the attack in Baqubah.

In New York, the United Nations secretary-general delivered a dismal report on the status of the U.S.-led effort to quell Iraq’s violence by putting thousands of additional soldiers in Baghdad and neighboring areas, including Diyala.

Ban Ki-moon said the troop “surge” had fallen far short of its goals to protect civilians, rein in militia fighters and quell sectarian warfare. He singled out increasing mortar and rocket attacks on the heavily fortified Green Zone, where the U.S. Embassy, Iraqi parliament and many government installations are based, as a sign of how things are worsening.

The United Nations headquarters also is in the Green Zone, and the secretary-general said that because of incoming fire, staff had been moved to “more hardened” facilities. The only long-term solution was construction of a new headquarters to withstand the increasingly larger-caliber rockets being fired into the Green Zone, he said in a regular quarterly report to the Security Council.

The parliamentary decision to oust Mashadani came a day after a lawmaker from the leading Shiite bloc, the United Iraqi Alliance, accused the speaker’s guards of insulting and assaulting him during a disagreement. It was unclear what triggered the argument with the legislator, Fariyad Mohammed, but it became the latest in a series of incidents that politicians said illustrated Mashadani’s erratic behavior.

Last month, the speaker lunged at and slapped another Sunni lawmaker and muttered, “Damn you!” after a disagreement in parliament. In January, after Prime Minister Nouri Maliki announced the upcoming launch of the security plan, Mashadani openly criticized the plan and joined in a raucous debate that became so heated that state-run TV stopped airing it.

Mashadani, a physician who was jailed under the regime of Saddam Hussein, at times has abruptly ended parliamentary sessions and is seen by some lawmakers as rude and dismissive.

“Inside sessions, he always talks and shouts. No one can run a parliament like this,” said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish lawmaker. “He has done many things wrong, and this was the final straw.”

Members of Mashadani’s own Tawafiq bloc did not object to offering up a replacement within a week to avoid having the issue spin out of control.

“We do not want this issue to assume a political dimension, and we do not want it to spread to the Iraqi street or to create a crisis,” said Saleem Abdullah Juboori of the Tawafiq bloc.

He said Mashadani, who was on holiday, would retain his seat in the 275-member parliament.

The legislature has been beset by sectarian and personal dissent since its formation after Iraq’s national elections in December 2005, and recently it has come under increased pressure from Washington to take up measures on sharing national oil wealth, returning ousted Baath Party officials to government positions and tackling constitutional reform issues.

None of the so-called benchmarks has been brought before parliament, however, and lawmakers are tentatively scheduled to take July and August off. Othman said they might take only one month off, or less, given the work yet to be done.

“I’m afraid parliament is working slowly, and not according to expectations at all,” he said, suggesting that Washington lawmakers come and sit in on a few sessions to see the problem for themselves.

At least 3,512 American troops have died in the Iraq theater since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, according to the website www.icasualties.org, and U.S. lawmakers opposed to the war have been increasing pressure on President Bush to prove that the military involvement is producing results on the political front. The U.S. military commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, is due to present a progress report in September.

susman@latimes.com

Times staff writer Suhail Ahmad and special correspondents in Baghdad and Baqubah contributed to this report.