New Disputes Delay Oil Bill in Iraq

People wounded in a car bomb blast are treated in a hospital in the Shiite enclave of Sadr City, in Baghdad Tuesday, July 3, 2007. A car bomb exploded late Tuesday at an outdoor market in the Shaab area of northeast Baghdad, killing 18 people and wounding 35, police said. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim) (Karim Kadim - AP)

The Kurds, in particular, want control of potentially lucrative future discoveries of reserves in their northern enclave.

Further complicating the negotiations are other political disputes. Al-Maliki's main Sunni coalition partner, the Iraqi Accordance Front, was not present when the Cabinet approved the draft because it is boycotting meetings in a row over an arrest warrant issued against the Sunni culture minister.

An Accordance Front leader warned Wednesday that no draft should be considered until the Sunnis sign on.

Al-Maliki may have pushed the bill through the Cabinet in an attempt to force the Accordance Front to end its boycott.

But the Kurds also objected, fearing concessions had been made to the Sunnis. The Kurdistan Regional Government warned it would oppose the bill if it made "material and substantive changes" to an outline agreed upon during weeks of negotiations.

Meanwhile, the Shiite party loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, which opposes too much decentralization, outright rejected the draft, saying it "left nothing of Iraq's unity."

Al-Maliki can still put together enough votes to get the legislation through parliament, where the Accordance Front, the Sadrists and the Kurdish parties hold 127 of the 275 seats. But passage over vocal opposition from one of the major blocs _ such as the Sunnis _ would mean a failure of the legislation's broader goal of reconciliation.

The oil bill is the first of the political benchmarks that Bush has pressed al-Maliki to meet, along with opening jobs to Sunnis who supported Saddam, amending the constitution to satisfy Sunni aspirations and holding local elections. The Iraqis pledged to meet the benchmarks by the end of last year but failed due to political haggling and the security crisis.

Besides bringing together Iraqis, U.S. officials are also hoping progress on the benchmarks will show the American public _ where support for the war is dropping _ that Bush's strategy is working.

Bush ordered 28,000 more U.S. troops to Iraq this year to launch security crackdowns in Baghdad and north and south of the capital aimed at tamping down insurgents enough to allow political agreement.

The offensives have boosted American casualties, although the number of bombings and shootings has fallen in the city in recent days.

As U.S. troops in some bases marked the July 4 holiday, two Americans were reported killed in separate incidents, one when a helicopter "went down" in Ninevah province north of Baghdad and the second during combat operations in southern Baghdad.

A brief statement by Multinational Corps-Iraq said another soldier was wounded in the helicopter incident and was transported to a U.S. military hospital. The statement did not explain why the helicopter went down or whether it was involved in combat operations.

U.S. forces killed 10 insurgents in a raid Wednesday on a suspected al-Qaida hideout in western Anbar province, the military said in a statement. In a separate battle earlier this week, U.S. troops killed 25 insurgents outside the city of Baqouba, northeast of Baghdad, the military said.

Three suicide car bombers hit police checkpoints in Baghdad and the western cities of Ramadi and Habbaniyah, killing nine policemen and two civilians. A car bomb hit a popular restaurant outside the northern town of Beiji on the highway to Baghdad, killing three civilians and wounding 12 people.

In northern Iraq, police found the bodies of two members of the minority Yazidi religious sect who had been reported kidnapped three days earlier in the city of Mosul, police said. The bullet-riddled body of an abducted police colonel, a Sunni Kurd, was found in Baghdad.

The violence reports came from policemen who all spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to release information to the media.