Key party takes opposition role
Leaders of a small, influential political party within Iraq’s leading Shiite alliance announced Friday it was walking out of negotiations over ministerial appointments and would use its 15 legislative seats in the national Council of Representatives to play an opposition role.
The Fadhila party, which currently holds the Oil Ministry, met resistance from Prime Minister-designate Nouri al-Maliki, who has publicly stated that he wants to appoint nonsectarian politicians to Iraq’s most powerful ministries.
The political wrangling threatens to further delay the appointment of new ministers, the final step in finalizing the government. U.S. officials believe that naming effective, nonsectarian ministers is the only way to quell Iraq’s sectarian violence.
Yet violence hit the Iraqi army itself on Friday, when two military units fired at each other after a roadside bomb exploded about 50 miles north of Baghdad.
London
Assisted suicide bill turned aside
Britain’s House of Lords on Friday rejected a bill to allow doctors to prescribe lethal drug doses to terminally ill patients, reflecting opposition among the public, government and church to assisted suicide.
The proposed British law was based largely on legislation in Oregon, the only state in the United States to have legalized assisted suicide. Seven hours of debate on the issue on Friday ranged from spiritual to practical concerns, including Christian theology, the high cost of health care and fears that the measure could become a substitute for quality medical care in Britain.
The 148-100 vote against the measure ends any chance of its passage, as the proposal will not proceed to the lawmaking House of Commons.
Moscow
Russian officials fired in crackdown
Russian authorities fired a string of high-ranking security and law enforcement officials in a shake-up described Friday as part of a Kremlin push to fight graft and cement control of key government agencies.
The firing of senior officials in the Federal Customs Service, Federal Security Service, Interior Ministry and the Prosecutor General’s Office – among the most powerful agencies in Russia – was reported by local media Friday, two days after President Vladimir Putin called for a stronger anti-corruption effort in his state of the nation speech.
Government officials said little about the firings, but analysts said they could indicate a strike against what may have been a ring of corrupt officials.
“It looks like a major corruption scheme that involved representatives of different agencies,” said Yevgeny Volk, the head of the Heritage Foundation’s Moscow office. “Such schemes usually require coordination of action of various government organs.”