The Iraqi Parliament suspends sessions until further notice due to the sit-in of Al Sadr’s followers

July 30 (EUROPA PRESS) –

The president of the Iraqi Parliament, Mohamed al Halbusi, announced this Saturday the suspension of all sessions until further notice given the sit-in carried out this Saturday by dozens of followers of the cleric Muqtada al Sadr inside the chamber.

In his announcement, Al Halbusi asks the government to protect state institutions and political parties that establish, as the country’s prime minister, Mostafá al Kazemi, a peaceful dialogue.

The calls for calm in recent hours have been joined by the Arab League, whose secretary general, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, has asked all Iraqi forces to defuse the prevailing tension.

The secretary-general’s spokesman, Jamal Rushdie, has declared that his superior “is closely following the course of the current crisis in Iraq, and that he joins his voice with the voice of the wise Iraqi leaders so that everyone takes responsibility, that all parties act prudently and put Iraq’s interest above all else,” according to statements reported by the official Iraqi news agency INA.

Tens of thousands of supporters of the cleric Al Sadr, winner of the last legislative elections, have thus returned to blockade the Iraqi capital in protest at the candidacy of the pro-Iranian Shiite politician Mohamed Shia al Sudani, rival of the religious, to the post of new prime minister in substitution of Al Kazemi.

The clashes with the security forces have so far resulted in 125 injuries, 25 of them police officers and other security elements, as confirmed by the Iraqi Ministry of Health.

Al Sadr, whose Sayirún coalition won the legislative elections last year, has spent months denouncing the inability of the rest of the political forces to form a new government, and has assured that the pro-Iranian group to which the candidate Al Sudani belongs, Marco de Coordinación, a large defeated in the elections, should not have a presence in the new Executive.

However, and after the resignation in June of the Sadrist parliamentary bloc due to the blockage in the negotiations, the pro-Iranian group decided to take a step forward and present Al Sudani, a former Minister of Labor and Social Affairs, as a candidate.