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CBS Workers Seized; Car Bombers Target U.S.-Backed Sunnis
Smoke rises from dual car bombs in Baghdad that killed at least 14 people in an attack aimed at Sunni tribesmen fighting insurgents.
(By Wathiq Khuzaie -- Getty Images)
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The discord over the budget has centered primarily on funding for the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. In recent years, the regional government there has received 17 percent of the total budget. But many Shiite and Sunni lawmakers believe that the Kurds make up as little as 13 percent of the country's population, and so should only receive that fraction of government spending.
The Kurds also want the Iraqi military to fund payments for the pesh merga, the fighters in their region, while the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki wants them to be funded out of the allocation earmarked for the Kurdish regional government.
The current draft law calls for the Kurdish region to receive 17 percent of the budget, and for a census to be taken this year to determine the percentage of Kurds in Iraq. Future allocations would then be pegged to that figure. The proposed legislation would call for Maliki and the Kurdish government to resolve the issue of pesh merga funding.
Kurds have been furious in recent days that the vote on the budget continues to be delayed. Rumors circulated in parliament that the Kurds would walk out, though the leader of the Kurdish bloc, Fouad Masoum, said no decision had been made to do so.
"Why are we not voting?" asked Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish lawmaker. "This is a parliament. We are supposed to vote on laws. If we don't, what is the point of being here?"
Also on Monday, the U.S. military announced that one soldier was killed and two others were wounded in northern Iraq on Sunday, after their vehicles were struck by a roadside bomb. No further details were released.
Correspondent Sudarsan Raghavan and special correspondents Naseer Nouri, Zaid Sabah, K.I. Ibrahim, Dalya Hassan and Saad al-Izzi in Baghdad and other Washington Post staff in Iraq contributed to this report.
