Baghdad
With just a month to go before the deadline for a major progress report, the Iraqi parliament adjourned this week for all of August. The parliament failed to pass the “benchmarks” the U.S. has been pushing for, including an agreement on how to share Iraq’s oil wealth among its provinces. “We didn’t achieve anything” in the entire session, said Nassar Rubaie, the head of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s bloc. “This very simply clarified the depth of the political and security problems.” Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish lawmakers all blamed one another for refusing to compromise. Parliament will return Sept. 4, just 11 days before U.S. military commanders are to report to the U.S. Congress about Iraq’s progress.
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