By Xinhua
Baghdad : Iraqi parliament members refused to ratify the long-awaited 2008 budget on Wednesday after debates over allocations, dealing another setback to the national reconciliation efforts despite the pickup in security situation.
Parliament speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani presided a meeting with leaders of political blocs and two financial and economic parliamentary committees late on Monday, in which he urged them to ratify the 48-billion-U.S. dollar budget in the upcoming parliament session on Thursday, his office said in a statement obtained by Xinhua on Wednesday.
“The speaker asserted in his speech during the meeting that all members of the political blocs and members of financial and economic parliamentary committees should submit their reservations on the 2008 budget on Thursday. To hurry up the approval of the budget in order to provide the fundamental needs for the Iraqi people,” the statement said.
“Delaying the ratification of the budget will have negative impact on the improvement of the security situation, in addition to its impact on rebuilding the country and the government performance,” it said.
In recent sessions, the lawmakers failed to endorse the budget as many of them rejected the allocations of the billions of dollars, including the 17 percent of the budget allocated to the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq as well as additional funds to pay for the Kurdish Peshmerga security forces.
Many lawmakers raised concerns that the budget needs substantial changes before it is put to vote.
Osama al-Nujaifi of the Iraqi National List headed by former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi complained that the government had not given the final financial statements for the past years and that the Kurdistan share of 17 percent of the budget was not fair.
For his part, Hassan al-Shimmari, a parliamentary member of the Shiite Fadhila party, which has 15 seats in parliament said that his bloc rejects the “unjustifiable allocations” of the budget which he deems “does not meet the needs of Iraqi people.”
Most of the debates raised by the lawmakers, obviously, reflect the profound divisions among the Iraqi lawmakers. Such divisions also involved other laws of oil and gas which the U.S. administration considers vital for national reconciliation among the Iraqi factions.
The debate over the budget proved that the reconciliation remains a tough work despite an earlier positive sign of passing through a law of reinstatement of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party members to government jobs.
On Jan. 12, Iraqi parliament passed the controversial law in a gesture considered by Washington as vital to give a push to the reconciliation efforts in the war-torn country.