IAF meets Sat. to name candidate for parl. speaker

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: The Sunni Iraqi Accord Front is meeting on Saturday to name a candidate for the position of Iraqi parliament speaker, an IAF lawmaker said on Friday. “The front will observe the criteria of efficiency in its selection of a new candidate for the speaker post,” Abdulkareem al-Samarraie told IraqiNews.com news agency. He said that the IAF has settled with the other political blocs the question that an IAF candidate would be the one subject to voting. Samarrie did not give further details nor referred to any names of candidates for the post. IAF member Hashim al-Tai’e, however, had said on Jan. 2 that IAF lawmakers Iyad al-Samarraie and Osama al-Tikriti are the most likely candidates to fill the post. The Iraqi parliament had accepted the resignation of Parliament Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani and his request for retirement in an extraordinary session held on Dec. 23, 2008 after squabbles between him and members from the parliament’s security & defense and legal committees. Mashhadani has uttered some phrases considered “insulting” by many MPs who later demanded his resignation. Tareq al-Hashimi, the Iraqi vice president and one of the key leaders of the IAF, had said members of the Presidential Board (PB) and Executive Council have asserted the vacant parliament speaker post should be filled only by an IAF member. Mashhadani belongs to Khalaf al-Alyan’s National Dialogue Council (NDC), one of the components of the Sunni bloc. The NDC withdrew the IAF after Mashhdani’s resignation. AmR (S) 1