WASHINGTON — The holiday plans of foreign lawmakers are not normally a topic of intense political interest in Washington.
But in a town where the president is known for extended stays at his Texas ranch and Congress shuns longer workweeks, the vacation schedule of lawmakers in Baghdad has suddenly and incongruously moved to the top of the agenda.
At issue is whether the Iraqi parliament will take its regular summer break, a two-month vacation scheduled to begin July 1. If it does, Republican lawmakers have warned that the Iraqis' recess could cost President Bush support from within his own party at a crucial moment in the war.
The U.S.-backed government in Baghdad "would lose a lot of support here," said Sen. Tom Coburn, a conservative Republican from Oklahoma who has opposed Democratic attempts to set a deadline for U.S. troop cutbacks in Iraq. "We're fighting hard. You need to be fighting hard."
Top administration officials have noted the concern. Vice President Dick Cheney raised the issue in meetings with Iraqi officials in Baghdad on Wednesday, and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates discussed it during his most recent trip to Iraq.
"I'll be blunt: I told some of the Iraqis with whom I met that we are buying them [time] for political reconciliation, and that every day we buy it with American blood," Gates said at a Senate hearing Wednesday. "For this group to go out for two months, it would, in my opinion, be unacceptable."
The political weight that the vacation has taken on irritates some Iraqis and strikes others as odd. Even when it is in session, Iraq's parliament is hardly a model of legislative efficiency.
The Iraqi parliament normally meets three times a week, on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, but its sessions involve numerous problems that Congress does not face.
This week, Tuesday's session was canceled because the parliament building's electricity was out, a result of Baghdad's chronic power shortages. That meant microphones did not work, the windowless room in which legislators meet was dark, and there was no air-conditioning at a time the outside temperature was rising into the 90s.
Of the 275 lawmakers, 170 were present for the session that never happened. Attendance has been a persistent problem -- reasons for absences range from boycotts to traffic jams caused by suicide bombings and checkpoints. The body managed to hold its session Wednesday.
