Embattled Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's national reconciliation program suffered a major blow on Friday as the key Sunni Arab bloc ordered its six ministers to quit his government.
In protest to an arrest warrant issued against one of its ministers, Sunni lawmaker Omar Abdul-Sattar Mahmud said the National Concord Front will request that its ministers suspend their participation in Maliki's Cabinet.
"The National Concord Front demanded that its members in the Cabinet suspend their participation until the government meets their demands," Mahmud said.
DEMAND
"With all respect to the judicial system, we condemn the unfair warrant, we demand that the case be investigated further, that the minister's reputation be restored, and that the security forces be punished," he said.
An Iraqi court has issued an arrest warrant for culture minister Asaad Kamal al-Hashemi for allegedly masterminding an ambush attack on fellow Sunni member of parliament Mithal Alussi in February 2005.
Alussi escaped the ambush in Baghdad but his two sons were killed.
On Tuesday, Iraqi forces raided the house of Hashemi and held dozens of his bodyguards.
Alussi, an independent lawmaker, said the warrant issued was for "terrorist activities" including the slaying of his sons, and that two gunmen detained for the murder had confessed to launching the ambush on Hashemi's orders.
CRACKDOWN
The Front's move comes at a time when US and Iraqi forces are carrying out a massive security crackdown in Baghdad in a bid to provide political space for Maliki to step up his reconciliation efforts.
On Friday, the US military announced the deaths of five more troops killed in an ambush in Baghdad involving a roadside bomb and a small arms assault. Seven soldiers were wounded in the attack.
The latest deaths took US losses in Iraq to 82 last month alone and to 3,559 since the March 2003 invasion, according to a count based on Pentagon figures.
Maliki is under pressure to quell the raging Sunni insurgency by winning the trust of the disenchanted former elite.
A member of parliament from the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance who is considered to be a close adviser to Maliki rejected the Sunni bloc's charges and insisted that Hashemi's case was a purely judicial matter.
"They are proclaiming the minister's innocence in spite of all the evidence that has been presented in the case," Sami al-Askari said in an interview with Al-Hurra television.
HINDERING WORK
"The problem we are confronting is that there are some parties in the government and the parliament that are trying to bring down the government and hinder its work," he said.
Askari said that he believed Hashemi, who has been on the run and is believed to be hiding in the Green Zone, was being sheltered by the US government. The US embassy has said it has no involvement in the case.
The defection of the Sunni ministers comes as a heavy blow to Maliki's fragile coalition, which is under intense internal and external pressure to pass benchmark legislation aimed at healing Iraq's numerous internal conflicts.
OIL REVENUES
Parliament is currently discussing major legislation on the distribution of oil revenues, the revision of the country's de-Baathification policies and amendments to the Constitution.
But its efforts so far have been mired in delays and factional infighting.
Earlier last month, Shiite radical leader Moqtada al-Sadr ordered his 32 members of parlieament to withdraw their support from the government in protest to the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra, lying to the north of Baghdad.
He had earlier withdrawn his six ministers from the Cabinet. All are set to be replaced by independent technocrats, but parliament has not yet officially nominated them for the Cabinet posts.
Sadr is considering calling an end to the boycott, according to a senior Shiite lawmaker who visited him in the holy city of Najaf on Friday.
"Moqtada al-Sadr told me that he is considering this and I hope he makes a decision by Tuesday," acting speaker Khalid al-Attiyah said.
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