BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraq's new National Assembly failed yesterday to deliver on even its most modest goal — electing a parliamentary speaker — and then deteriorated into acrimonious protests and an abrupt decision to finish the session in secret.

While deputies tried to make their views heard from the floor, Iraqi state television cut the live feed and switched to a stirring rendition of Iraq's unofficial national anthem.

Authorities removed television cameras and reporters from the hall.

"The streets are waiting today, waiting to see our achievements, waiting to see our work," Hussein al-Sadr, a deputy allied with interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, shouted shortly after yesterday's session opened. "What shall we say to the people who sacrificed themselves and to those who took the risk to vote on Jan. 30? What is the reason for the delay?"

At immediate issue was the appointment of a speaker for the 275-member parliament. But the broader concern was the failure to form a transitional government and start work on a new Iraqi constitution.

With the setback yesterday, the seating of a government remains several days if not weeks away. And leading officials admitted that a mid-August deadline for the writing of the constitution now seems impossibly optimistic.

Instead, they predicted, the assembly ultimately would have to invoke a clause in the transitional law giving it an extra six months to work. That would delay full elections for a permanent government, perhaps until June 2006.

"Realistically you cannot write a constitution in three and a half months," said Hajem al-Hassani, the interim minister of industry and minerals who is a member of the largest — with only five seats — Sunni bloc in the assembly. "Some people say we have lots of things in common, but I think this is just wishful thinking. It is going to be very difficult. There are going to be lots of negotiations."

Writing the constitution is expected to be a far thornier process, with far greater implications, than setting up an interim government that is scheduled to hold office only until the end of 2005. Yet the Shiites and Kurds have spent weeks negotiating and renegotiating issues of authority, territory and money.

Two months after the Jan. 30 elections that most Iraqis consider a tremendous achievement on their road to democracy, the National Assembly has met only twice. The March 17 ceremonial opening was imbued with good will and elevated by decorum. Yesterday's session was not.

"We demand to know the details of what's happening behind the scenes!" one woman stood up and shouted. Other deputies protested from their seats.

The Shiites and Kurds who control most of the seats in parliament alternately blamed each other, the Sunnis or Allawi's people. The Sunnis blamed the Shiites and Kurds. And Allawi stormed out of the hall shortly after the assembly's interim leader ordered the media to leave.

The assembly is scheduled to reconvene Sunday. By then, officials said, Sunnis should be able to put forth a nominee for the speaker's post.

The speaker's job is not a powerful one. But Iraqi leaders hope its high profile will help convince Sunnis they have a voice in Iraq's future, even though their low voter turnout Jan. 30 left them with little representation in the assembly.

The Shiites and Kurds say they want Sunnis to be part of the political process, with representation in important Cabinet posts, to foster trust among Iraq's ethnic and sectarian groups and to strip away support for the armed insurgency. Many Sunnis fear a Shiite-led government will repress them and see guerrilla attacks on American and Iraqi security forces as justifiable resistance.

In Washington, President Bush told a group of Iraqi law students and religious figures: "The free people of Iraq are now doing what Saddam Hussein never could: making Iraq a positive example for the entire Middle East."

The National Assembly "includes people and parties with differing visions for the future of their country," Bush added. "In a democratic Iraq, these differences will be resolved through debate and persuasion instead of force and intimidation."

In insurgent violence yesterday, a car bomb aimed at a Kurdish official in the northern city of Kirkuk killed one person and wounded at least 17, news services reported. An oil-company executive survived an assassination attempt in Basra. And three Romanian journalists were kidnapped in Baghdad.

President Bush said yesterday's parliamentary session was "another step on the road to a free society."

The decision to turn off the television cameras and force reporters out of the assembly hall was within the transitional administrative law written by the U.S.-led occupation authority before Iraq regained sovereignty last June 28. The assembly is to meet in public, the law states, "unless circumstances require otherwise."

Bush's comments were reported by The Washington Post.