Iraq's flag redesign erases one of the last public symbols of the Hussein regime

The most recent changes precede a pan-Arab meeting in Arbil, in the largely autonomous Kurdistan region, planned for February or March this year.

On Tuesday ... Kurdish lawmakers pushed for a compromise, dropping their insistence on yellow lettering for the Arabic inscription, for a design without Baathist references.

Zuhair Humadi, a senior adviser to the Shiite-led Iraqi government, said the Kurds sought the deal before an international conference of members of Arab Parliaments in weeks.

"They won't come if only the Kurdish flag is flying," Mr. Humadi said of the Arab leaders. "And Barzani wanted that meeting to be in Kurdistan, and he will not allow Saddam Hussein's flag to be flown. So they agreed to this."

Some considered the action rushed, and Reuters reported that the changes would likely be temporary and the new flag will fly for only a year.

Lawmakers loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who hold 30 seats in parliament,

voted against the proposal

for that reason, saying they would prefer to keep the existing flag until a permanent one was chosen.

Other ethnic parties remained unsatisfied with the changes, saying they believe the Kurdish regional government was simply pursuing its own agenda, which has included recent contracts with foreign oil companies, The Washington Post reports.

"It was an organized conspiracy to change the flag," said Khalaf al-Alayan, a Sunni member of parliament.

Nothing goes unchallenged in Iraq's parliament, and the legislation adopted Tuesday to create a new, temporary Iraqi flag proved no exception. If anything, the contentious process reflected the larger sectarian differences that consistently tug at this country.

The recent changes are part of a slew of recent debates over the flag. In 2004, a redesign caused an ever greater stir. The American-appointed Iraqi Governing Council announced a version by London architect Rifat Chadirji. It was white, blue, and yellow, with a prominent Islamic crescent. Even the United States military paper Stars and Stripes said the crescent was "an unfortunate shade of blue" that bore a striking resemblance to Israel's flag.

Others suggested the flag evoked new post-Soviet states that wanted to emphasize Islamic heritage – Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan. That left out Iraq's Christians and other religious or ethnic groups.

Reactions to the most recent change appeared tame, compared to the 2004 embroglio, reports The Boston Globe, which caused protests. Still, on Wednesday, the Iraq Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS) told the Iraqi daily Aswat Aliraq that the decision was "illegitimate."

"The AMS is convinced that every thing approved or adopted in the time of occupation will not continue after its withdrawal," the AMS said in a statement received by Aswat al-Iraq - Voices of Iraq - (VOI). "This came within a series of decisions that affect Iraq's sovereignty."

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