BAGHDAD — Iraq has run out of money to pay for widows’ benefits, farm crops and other programs for the poor, the parliament leader told lawmakers, who have collected nearly $180,000 so far this year in one of the world’s most oil rich nations.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military said a soldier was shot dead Sunday in northern Iraq. The statement did not provide details, pending notification of next of kin. But an Iraqi policeman in the northern city of Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s hometown, reported a U.S. soldier was hit by sniper fire at the Salahuddin provincial council headquarters.
It was the third combat related death of an American service member since the U.S. formally ended all combat operations Aug. 31.
In only their fourth session since being elected in March, members of Iraq’s parliament Sunday demanded to know what happened to the estimated $1 billion allocated for welfare funding by the Finance Ministry for 2010.
“We should ask the government where these allocations for widows’ aid have gone,” demanded Sadrist lawmaker Maha Adouri of Baghdad, one of the women who make up a quarter of the legislature’s 325 members. “There are thousands of widows who did not receive financial aid for months.”
Another legislator said farmers have not been paid for wheat and other crops they supplied the government for at least five months.
The cause of the shortfall was unclear, but officials have worried that the deadlock over forming a new government since March’s inconclusive election ultimately would lead to funding shortages.
Speaker Osama al-Nujaifi promised that parliament would push the Iraqi government for answers on where the money went. But he said new funding for the nation’s social-care programs will have to come out of the 2011 budget, which he said would be sent to parliament within days.
He said the Finance Ministry recently alerted parliament of the cash drain. A Finance Ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media put the 2010 welfare budget total at about $1 billion. He would not say what caused the shortfall.
“We will ask the government about this - if there isany carelessness or delaying these payments,” said al-Nujaifi, a Sunni member of the Iraqiya political alliance.
Also Sunday, gunmen stormed the home of an Iraqi TV reporter and shot him to death in front of his parents in the northern city of Mosul, police said. Mazin Mardan, 18, was the third employee of the Al-Mousiliyah satellite channel to be killed by insurgents this year.
Information for this article was contributed by Rebecca Santana, Hamid Ahmed, Mazin Yahya and Sinan Salaheddin of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 11/22/2010