Baghdad, Iraq ? Iraq puts its fragile democracy to the test today, convening its first freely elected National Assembly in recent history after last-minute bargaining over Sunni Arab candidates to head the parliament.

Shiite Muslim officials said they failed to reach final agreement in talks with the Kurds — who are mostly Sunni Muslim but secular — and the Sunni Arabs. But those failures were not enough to prevent the 275-member National Assembly from preparing to meet today for the first time since the Jan. 30 elections.

“It will be a historic event because the Iraqi people will witness an elected parliament for the first time in their lives,” said Ali al-Dabagh, a member of the Shiite clergy-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, which won the most seats in the elections.