BAGHDAD (AFP) — Iraq's parliament reconvenes on Tuesday for what is expected to be a stormy session over allowing members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party back into positions of power and to tackle a key oil law.
Bitterly-divided lawmakers return to the national assembly after a month-long holiday Washington had urged them not to take, just days ahead of a crucial progress report on Iraq to the US Congress.
Washington sees resolution of the Baath party issue and the passage of the oil law as benchmarks to measure Iraq's progress towards political reconciliation that will eventually allow a withdrawal of US forces from the war-ravaged country.
On August 27, Iraq's five most senior leaders led by President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki pledged to resolve the disputes, which since the US-led invasion in 2003 that toppled Saddam have caused bitter wrangling between Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish sects.
"Lawmakers have major differences on these issues," said MP Nassar al-Rubaie from the 32-seat political bloc of fiery Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who has millions of followers, most of them Shiites heavily oppressed during the rule of the Baath regime.
"Differences persist when it comes to Baathists, oil and provincial elections," Rubaie told AFP.
Replacing of the four-year-old de-Baathification law by a draft bill known as the Reconciliation and Accountability Law has been a long standing demand of the Sunni Arab leaders.
The law will facilitate the return of former Baathists, with no criminal records, to government or military jobs.
"The Reconciliation and Accountability Law will be on top of the agenda" of the parliamentary session, said Omar Abdul Sattar Mahmud, MP from the National Concord Front, the main Sunni bloc in the assembly, holding 44 seats.
Analysts say that the sacking of thousands of Baathists from government and military jobs after the fall of Saddam created a lack of bureaucrats and severely weakened military leadership in the war-torn country.
Early passage of the law through the 275-seat parliament could boost Maliki's Shiite-led administration, some lawmakers say.
"There is nobody to run the daily show. It was the Baathists who knew the bureaucracy and the present government is short of such people," Kurdish MP Mahmud Othman told AFP recently.
The other key bill expected to dominate the agenda is a law that will determine ownership of Iraq's vast oil deposits, which has faced stiff resistance from all three communities.
Maliki's cabinet passed the bill in July but parliament had come nowhere near to discussing it when it went into summer recess on July 31.
The bill, seen by Washington as one of the key factors to help end sectarian bloodshed in Iraq, lays down control of the country's oil wealth and how it would be distributed across the communities in the 18 provinces.
US officials have repeatedly urged the Iraqis to adopt a consensus law on sharing revenues and on international investment in order to head off future conflict and allow the oil sector to develop.
Iraq's oil reserves are largely in the Kurdish north and the Shiite south. Sunni Arabs from the central and western regions fear they could be robbed of the revenues from the crude exports.
"The oil law is important but it will take a long time to be passed given the differences," said Sattar Mahmud.
Aside from the Sunnis, even the Kurds are concerned at the contents of the bill as a number of foreign companies have already entered into contracts with the northern Kurdish government to explore for oil in that region.
Kurds fear these contracts could be terminated after Oil Minister Hussein Shahristani said in May that any contract signed before the adoption of the law would be cancelled.
Kurdish officials insist they will honour the contracts, and also claim to have reached an agreement with Baghdad whereby it will receive 17 percent of the country's oil revenues.
Othman said many of the lawmakers had not even read the bill.
"A lot of them are against the law because of the American pressure. They think it is an American law and they haven't even read it," he said.
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