KUWAIT CITY: Shiite and Sunni MPs fought with fists in Kuwait’s Parliament Wednesday during a heated debate over inmates in the U.S. Guantanamo detention center, amid rising sectarian tension in the Gulf state.
Parliament was holding a debate over two Kuwaiti detainees in the U.S. prison camp in Cuba that Washington has refused to release when Shiite MP Hussein al-Kallaf provoked some Sunni fellow MPs by dismissing the prisoners as “Al-Qaeda” militants.

Chaos erupted when Jamaan al-Harbash of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood told Kallaf the debate was not called to discuss Al-Qaeda but Guantanamo prisoners.
Two Shiite and four Sunni lawmakers were involved in the fight prompting acting Speaker MP Abdullah al-Rumi to adjourn the session.

Later, Parliament Speaker Jassem al-Khorafi, describing the unprecedented fight as “shameful,” adjourned sessions until May 31 and ordered Parliament’s bureau to investigate.
Independent MP Rudhan al-Rudhan called on the oil-rich emirate’s ruler to use his constitutional powers to suspend Parliament sessions for one month.

Shiite MP Adnan al-Mutawa, who received a cut under the eye in the scuffle, accused Sunni MPs of not believing in democracy, saying assaulting opponent MPs “is a form of terrorism.”
During the debate, which was attended by a delegation of U.S. lawyers defending the inmates, Islamist MPs called on the government to press the United States to free the two Kuwaiti inmates or complain to the International Criminal Court.

The U.S. had already released 10 Kuwaitis from Guantanamo but has rejected all appeals from its staunch ally Kuwait to free the remaining two.
Kuwait on Dec. 1 disowned comments attributed to its former interior minister calling for the death of its nationals held at Guantanamo Bay.

Former Interior Minister Sheikh Jaber was quoted by WikiLeaks as telling the U.S. ambassador that his country did not want to see the return of the Kuwaiti suspects and suggested “the best thing to do is get rid of them.”
The exchange between Sheikh Jaber and the U.S. envoy to Kuwait, took place in February 2009 and was recorded in a U.S. State Department cable published by WikiLeaks.
The Gulf country’s foreign minister had insisted, however, that “it is impossible to think that Kuwait will ever forget about its sons … detained in Guantanamo without trial.”
The fight came amid heightened sectarian tension between the minority Shiite community and the Sunni majority amid the background of local and regional issues.

Tensions soared when Shiites and Sunnis clashed over dispatching Gulf troops to Bahrain to crush Shiite-led protests and also after the uncovering of a spy ring allegedly working for the Revolutionary Guards in Shiite Iran.
In the past few weeks, police arrested several Shiite teenagers for writing derogatory statements against second Muslim Califate Omar and Prophet Mohammad’s wife Aisha, both highly revered by Sunnis but not by Shiites.
Shiites say they form around 30 percent of the 1.1 million native Kuwaitis, amid a lack of official count. They have nine MPs in the 50-seat Parliament and two ministers in the 16-member Cabinet.