On goodwill mission, Jolie has lunch with U.S. troops

Dozens of Iraqi legislators walked out of parliament to protest rules for elections.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — Note to world leaders: Next time you need instant access to foreign dignitaries and top military brass, forget the usual protocols. Just send in Angelina Jolie.

Hollywood’s globe-trotting leading lady swooped into Baghdad on Thursday to highlight the plight of Iraqi refugees, gaining an audience with Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the American Embassy said.

On her mission as a U.N. goodwill ambassador, Jolie also met with Iraqi migration officials to stress that there needs to be a coherent plan for the more than 2 million internally displaced Iraqis who are beginning to trickle back to their homes amid a recent lull in violence.

“There’s lots of goodwill and lots of discussion, but there seems to be just a lot of talk at the moment,” Jolie said in excerpts of an interview aired on CNN.

Jolie mingled with American troops during lunch at a dining facility in the heavily guarded Green Zone, which houses the embassy and Iraqi government offices. She grabbed a red plastic tray at the mess hall, collected her lunch and sat at a long banquet table to eat — her fork tines down, of course — as flashbulbs from soldiers’ digital cameras lighted up the wall behind her.

During the CNN interview, Jolie said the fate of Iraq will have an impact on the Middle East for years to come.

“And a big part of what it’s going to affect,” she said, “is how these people are returned and settled into their homes and their community and brought back together and whether they can live together and what their communities look like.”

Meanwhile, dozens of Iraqi legislators walked out of parliament Thursday to protest parts of a draft law that would lay out rules for provincial elections later this year, marking another potential setback for U.S.-backed proposals to ease Iraq’s sectarian rifts.

Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, meanwhile, warned his fighters to stick with his cease-fire order after U.S. and Iraqi raids in Baghdad’s Sadr City, the main Shiite district and bastion of al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia. The sweeps detained 15 suspected militants and left one person dead.

The U.S. military said troops targeted “criminal elements” responsible for attacks with mortars and powerful roadside bombs that the Pentagon links to Iranian aid.

In parliament, the walkout postponed a planned vote on the measure on redistributing power in Iraq. The last time Iraqis voted for local officials was January 2005, when nationwide elections ushered in representational government across Iraq for the first time in modern history.

But many Sunni Arabs boycotted the polls, giving Iraq’s majority Shiites and minority Kurds a much bigger share of power. The U.S. hopes the new elections will empower the Sunni minority and blunt support for the insurgency.

The draft law, if approved, would set an Oct. 1 date for provincial elections.

The main sticking point Thursday was a dispute over whether the authority to fire provincial governors should rest with the prime minister or with the councils that govern Iraq’s 18 provinces.

Nearly 90 members of the largest Shiite party, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, and its Kurdish allies stormed out of the session after lawmakers approved giving the power to the prime minister. Voting on the rest of the 56-point package was scheduled to resume Saturday.

The Kurds also were upset about a proposal that would only allot about 14.5 percent of the 2008 budget to their semi-autonomous region in northern Iraq, instead of the 17 percent they had demanded.

Only one of the U.S.-backed benchmarks have made it into law: a measure that allows lower-ranking members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party to reclaim government jobs.