By Ahmed Rasheed
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi lawmakers met on Wednesday totackle a protracted standoff over the 2008 budget and other keybills, but some legislators quit the session almost immediatelyin protest at voting procedures.
Lawmakers said they still had a quorum to vote on the $48billion budget, as well as an amnesty law that could freethousands of prisoners and a measure defining relations betweenthe central government and local authorities.
Scores of lawmakers stormed out of the legislature onTuesday, blaming each other for the deadlock and demonstratingthe deep distrust that exists between the country's Shi'ite,Sunni Arab and Kurdish politicians. Some MPs said parliamentshould be disbanded and new elections held.
In recent days, leaders of the political blocs agreed tovote on all three measures as a package because of mutualsuspicion that if one was voted on separately and approved, thefaction that wanted that most would renege on the rest.
Disputes over the budget have been the main trigger for thecrisis, with minority Kurds bickering with Iraq's Arabs overhow much money should go to the autonomous region of Kurdistan.
Iraqi officials have complained that failure to pass thebudget was holding up vital spending at a time when the UnitedStates is urging the government to jumpstart the economy totake advantage of falls in violence in recent months.
In a bid to break the deadlock, lawmakers discussed holdingvotes in secret and ballot boxes were brought into the chamber.The move was rejected by Kurdish lawmakers. Some lawmakersloyal to influential Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr walked out.
MPs said lawmakers had then begun to read each article ofeach law first and would then vote on all three as a package,as had been agreed earlier this week.
The budget was being read first, but Abdul Karim al-Eniziof the ruling Shi'ite Alliance said hurdles remained.
"We can't say that the three laws will pass easily. We willhave heated discussions," he said.
JOURNALISTS TO BE FREED, GROUP SAYS
In the southern city of Basra, a spokesman for Sadr'soffice there said a deal had been struck to free two kidnappedjournalists working for CBS News. The two were reported missingin Basra on Monday.
"We have held talks with the kidnappers to release them.They will be released," said Hareth al-Athari without givingdetails of when they would be freed.
Sadr's movement has a strong presence in the oil-rich city,and his office had said they would strive to convince thekidnappers to free the two journalists.
CBS issued a statement on Monday saying two of itsjournalists had gone missing. Police in Basra reported that themen, a British journalist and an interpreter, had been seizedfrom a city centre hotel.
The media has often been caught in the violence that hasengulfed the country since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
On Tuesday, a local journalist was found dead in centralBaghdad two days after being kidnapped, Iraq's JournalisticFreedoms Observatory said in a statement.
The Committee to Protect Journalists in a recent reportcalled the Iraq war "the deadliest conflict for journalists inrecent history," with 125 journalists and 49 support workerskilled since the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
(Additional reporting by Mike Holden)
(Writing by Dean Yates, Editing by Sean Maguire)
