Iraqi lawmakers eye pay cut to appease protesters

Iraq's lawmakers tentatively agreed Saturday to cut their monthly pay in half and reduce the salaries of the nation's top leaders in hopes of appeasing protesters who accuse them of living in luxury at the expense of the poor.

However, the plan would leave untouched some $20,000 per month in lawmakers' stipends and allowances.

Still, lawmakers described the move as at least a start in narrowing the gulf between Iraq's privileged and its poor.

"It's a good step," said Kurdish lawmaker Khalid Ashawani.

Several lawmakers said they are likely to approve the measure, which would reduce their annual salaries to about $60,000 from $120,000, when it goes before parliament in a few days.

The 325 legislators still would collect an additional $12,500 each month in housing and security allowances, as well as a $90,000 annual stipend.

Iraq has a 15 percent unemployment rate, and the average wage of a midlevel Iraqi government employee is about $600 per month.

Shiite lawmaker Hakim al-Zamili, whose religious hard-line Sadrist colleagues proposed the cut, said lawmakers were spurred by recent demonstrations across Iraq protesting scant jobs, dwindling electricity in people's homes, and government corruption. Al-Zamili said the new law also would make the salaries of Iraq's president and prime minister public for the first time.

"There has been no monitoring of how much they are paid," al-Zamili said. "This will keep a kind of balance in society, especially with poor people."

The legislation would bring the prime minister and president's salaries to $120,000 a year, which both Ashawani and al-Zamili described as a 50 percent pay cut. However, the prime minister's annual salary has long and widely been believed to be at least $360,000.

Iraq's two vice presidents and two deputy prime ministers would each make $108,000.

Last month, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki volunteered to return half of his salary to the public treasury in a symbolic gesture that appeared calculated to insulate himself from the anti-government unrest spreading across the Middle East.

Iraq's nascent democracy still struggles to contain both widespread corruption and violence. Earlier Saturday, gunmen ambushed seven Iraqi soldiers as they were leaving work in a former northern al-Qaida stronghold, killing them and fleeing before they could be captured, authorities said.

The soldiers had changed into their off-duty clothing and were driving off in a sport-utility vehicle when the attackers blocked off the road and opened fire with machine guns just outside the northern city of Mosul, located 225 miles (360 kilometers) northwest of Baghdad.

Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, has long been a gateway for extremists who smuggle in weapons, funding and fighters from neighboring Syria and head south to Baghdad on one of Iraq's major highways. Militants have been trying to regain strength in the city after losing it to American and Iraqi forces in fierce clashes at the height of the insurgency years ago.