Negotiators have struck a deal to release two CBS News journalists missing in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, a spokesman for Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said yesterday.
"We held talks with the kidnappers. They will be released," said Hareth al-Athari, the head of the cleric's Basra office, without giving details of when the pair would be freed.
US network CBS said on Monday two of their journalists had gone missing. Police in Basra said the men, a British journalist and an interpreter, were seized from a city centre hotel.
Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, was put under British control after the 2003 US-led invasion until security responsibility was handed over to Iraqi authorities in December. Britain retains a military base at the airport.
"We have a dispute with the British forces in Basra but that doesn't mean we have a dispute with the British people," Athari told reporters.
BRINKMANSHIP
Meanwhile, Iraqi members of parliament unanimously approved three flagship bills yesterday, including a delayed state budget for this year, ending weeks of brinkmanship that had sparked talk of a possible dissolution of parliament.
"We adopted three bills unanimously, including the budget," first deputy speaker Khaled al-Attiya told reporters after the session.
The other two bills adopted were an amnesty law and one setting out the powers of the provinces and procedures for provincial elections.
The passing of the bills had been among 18 "benchmarks" set by Washington to measure the pace of political reconciliation in Iraq.
The US$48 billion state budget had been due to be adopted before the end of last year but had been held up amid bickering between Iraq's rival Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni blocs, which each championed one of the three flagship bills.
The Kurds had said that they feared that if they supported the other two bills, other blocs would not reciprocate by backing the budget, which includes a controversial allocation of 17 percent of the spending to the autonomous northern Kurdish region.
Attiya said that in the end a compromise had been reached on the contested allocation, which will be 17 percent for this year but will be reviewed for next year on the basis of the Kurdish region's share of the population as assessed in a nationwide census to be held by the end of this year.
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