Iraq electricity minister offers to quit after bloody demos

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By Assad Abboud (AFP) – 1 hour ago

BAGHDAD — Iraqi Electricity Minister Karim Wahid offered to resign on Monday after a wave of bloody street protests demanding his dismissal over harsh power rationing in the scorching summer heat.

"I declare with courage that I offer to resign from my post," Wahid told state television. "I am ready to do whatever the prime minister (Nuri al-Maliki) wants me to do in order to serve the Iraqi people."

Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said Maliki would take no decision on Wahid's resignation offer until after a cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

"The council of ministers will discuss Karim Wahid's offer to resign on Tuesday morning," Dabbagh told AFP.

Although he describes himself as a Shiite independent, Wahid is seen as close to the prime minister.

Wahid charged that the demonstrations which have swept cities across central and southern Iraq leaving one protester dead had been "politicised" in a way that was damaging to resolving power generation problems.

"These demonstrations have been politicised by many parties," the minister charged. "In the difficult circumstances that Iraq is going through, politicising the issue will not solve it, it will complicate it."

Wahid said his best efforts to do the job had been undermined by excessive public expectations of what could be achieved with the funds available to boost power generation.

"This is not the first time that I have held this portfolio," he said. "The first time was in 2003," under the US-led occupation authority set up after that year's invasion overthrew now executed dictator Saddam Hussein.

"There is not enough finance for projects and it is due to the impatience of Iraqis," the minister insisted.

Public anger with the work of the electricity ministry has boiled over in recent days as temperatures have hit highs of 54 degrees Celsius (130 degrees Fahrenheit) in southern Iraq.

Rationing has seen Iraqis receive power for just one hour in five or less, making air conditioning and refrigeration a luxury available only to those with access to their own generators and fuel.

Earlier on Monday, hundreds of angry demonstrators pelted stones at riot police guarding the Dhi Qar provincial government headquarters in the southern city of Nasiriyah, putting 17 of them in hospital, including a lieutenant colonel, a security official said.

On Saturday, police in the main southern city of Basra killed one demonstrator and wounded two when they opened fire on a frenzied crowd throwing stones at provincial government offices there.

Protesters have refused to accept the government's explanation that years of UN sanctions against Saddam's regime followed by the US-led invasion and its violent aftermath have resulted in insufficient generator capacity.

The scale of public anger has alarmed the authorities amid a persistent political vacuum nearly four months after a general election that gave no one bloc the necessary majority to form a new administration.

In an interview with AFP earlier on Monday, Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari warned the Basra protest could be a harbinger of more trouble as prolonged "bickering" over who should be Iraq's next prime minister sparks mounting discontent among ordinary people more concerned by the lack of basic services.

"What we saw in Basra on Saturday was a warning," Zebari said. "It was the writing on the wall. The anger they showed was extraordinary."

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