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Iraqi parliament voted yesterday in a closed session to remove the speaker after a series of scandals involving the controversial lawmaker, legislators said.

 

Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, who did not attend the session, was told to immediately submit his resignation and his parliamentary bloc, the Sunni Arab Iraqi Accordance Front, to nominate a replacement within a week.

 

Al-Mashhadani's deputy, Khaled al-Attiyah, who chaired the session, will assume the duties of the speaker with immediate effect until a replacement for al-Mashhadani is chosen.

 

Al-Mashhadani's behavior has repeatedly embarrassed the Sunni Arab partners in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's coalition government. Many of the house's 275 legislators viewed his behavior as unbecoming and, on occasion, erratic.

 

Three lawmakers said the Accordance Front, parliament's largest Sunni Arab bloc with 44 of the house's 275 seats, has pledged to offer a replacement for al-Mashhadani within a week.

 

Al-Mashhadani, a former physician and an Islamist, is a member of the Accordance Front.

 

Al-Mashhadani has yet to publicly comment on his removal, but the lawmakers said he had suggested to visitors that he did not plan to resist his ouster.

 

A total of 168 lawmakers attended yesterday's session, of which 113 voted in favor of removing al-Mashhadani, said the lawmakers, who did not have the complete breakdown of the vote.

 

Al-Mashhadani, who will retain his seat in parliament, has been in trouble for sometime.

 

Last year, he barely survived a campaign by Shi'ite and Kurdish politicians to remove him after he said Iraqis who killed American troops should be celebrated as heroes. Last month, he slapped a fellow Sunni lawmaker in the face and called him "scum" at the end of a raucous session.

 

An incident on Sunday appeared to have been taken by lawmakers as the last straw.

 

Lawmaker Firyad Mohammed Omar, a Shi'ite Turkoman, said he was shoved by al-Mashhadani's security guards as the speaker made his way to the floor above inside the building that house the chamber in the US-protected Green Zone in central Baghdad.

 

Omar protested and complained to the speaker, who responded by heaping abuse on him.

 

(China Daily June 12, 2007)