NYTimes.com Article: In First Step, New Iraq Council Abolishes Hussein's

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Modernizers.  Always abolishing six holidays, creating one.

Steven Sherman

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In First Step, New Iraq Council Abolishes Hussein's Holidays

July 14, 2003
 By PATRICK E. TYLER 




 

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 13 - Three months after the fall of
Saddam Hussein, 25 prominent Iraqis from a variety of
political, ethnic and religious backgrounds stepped onto a
stage here today and declared themselves the first interim
government of Iraq. 

The members of the Governing Council said they would begin
meeting in continuous session on Monday to decide on a
rotating presidency or a similar leadership structure. As
its first act today, the Council abolished six national
holidays that had been celebrated under Mr. Hussein's
24-year rule and created a new national day. 

Two of the banned holidays were fast approaching, adding to
the urgency of forming a government, Iraqis said. Monday,
July 14, is the anniversary of the 1958 overthrow of the
monarchy, and July 17 is the anniversary of the 1968 coup
that brought Mr. Hussein's Baath Party to power. 

In their place, the Council declared April 9, the day that
Baghdad fell to allied forces as Mr. Hussein went into
hiding, the national day of a new Iraqi state. That state
will not emerge until the interim government decides on a
process to write a new constitution and to hold the first
democratic elections. No timetable for either task has been
set. 

Iyad Alawi, leader of the Iraqi National Accord and a
member of the Council, said the first priority of the
government "will be security and the resumption of
services." The Council was selected through negotiations
between the main Iraqi opposition groups and the office of
L. Paul Bremer III, the American civilian administrator for
the occupation. 

"We hope sometime next week to have declarations on
security that will comfort the Iraqi people," he said
without elaborating. Some Iraqis are pressing the United
States military to form a paramilitary force of Iraqis to
help defeat the remnants of Mr. Hussein's security forces
believed to be involved in attacks on American soldiers. 

The government formation took place under heavy security by
American soldiers, who have cordoned off a broad section of
central Baghdad that includes Mr. Hussein's Republican
Palace and the convention center where today's ceremony
took place. The Iraqis met privately for two hours and then
had lunch with the Western overseers of the occupation -
Mr. Bremer, and John Sawers, appointed by Prime Minister
Tony Blair of Britain - and Sérgio Vieira de Mello, the
United Nations representative, and other senior American
and British officials. 

When the 25 emerged for a news conference, 2 wore the black
turbans of Shiite Islamic clerics descended from the
Prophet Muhammad and 2 wore the flowing robes and
headdresses of tribal sheiks. Three women were among them,
two in head scarves and one without. The rest, men of
various political stripes, wore business suits. 

They arranged themselves in a semicircle as one of the
clerics, Sayyed Muhammad Bahr al-Uloum, read a one-page
statement, saying, "The establishment of this Council is an
expression of the national Iraqi will in the wake of the
collapse of the former oppressive regime." 

The occupation leaders looked up at them from the front row
in the convention center hall. During weeks of
negotiations, they agreed to cede considerable executive
powers to Iraqis after initially resisting anything greater
than an advisory role. They did so in the face of a
daunting reconstruction agenda, a critical shortage of
money and a security environment that resembles a
low-intensity war for the more than 160,000 allied troops. 

From here forward, the 25 Iraqis - doctors, lawyers,
teachers, engineers, clerics, diplomats, political
activists, businessmen and a judge - will share
responsibility for the course of postwar Iraq. 

A Kurd, Hoshyar Zebari, the political adviser to Massoud
Barzani, leader of the largest Kurdish political party, was
designated as the Council's press secretary. 

But when they walked out on stage, it was the elderly
cleric, Mr. Uloum, who approached the microphone. Holding
the text of the statement just below his snowy white beard
and squinting through thick glasses, he intoned, "In the
name of God, the merciful, the compassionate." 

Establishing this interim government is the first
significant political milestone in postwar Iraq, and some
of the new government members expressed a strong
determination to expand their powers. 

"We hope that this Council will work for a very short
time," said Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the other Shiite cleric
who represents the Supreme Council for the Islamic
Revolution of Iraq. "We should have a constitutional
government and we should get rid of the occupation." 

The very diversity of such a large Council raised questions
of whether it would be able to project unified goals and
principles in a chaotic transitional period where
significant segments of the population were pulling in
different directions. 

In the north, Kurds are seeking to protect the autonomy
they have won over the last 12 years. In the center, Sunnis
are divided by mistrust for Western occupation and old
loyalties to Mr. Hussein. In the south, Shiites worry that
their majority status will be subordinated, as it was in
the last century, to the Sunni minority. 

Members of the Council said today that they had been
assured that their decisions would not be vetoed by the
occupation authority. 

"I don't foresee that Mr. Bremer will ever cast a veto
against any decision taken by the Council," said Adnan
Pachachi, 80, a foreign minister and ambassador to the
United Nations during the pre-Hussein era of the 1960's.
"We were assured that all decisions of the Council will be
respected." Differences of opinion, he added, can "be
managed easily through consultation." 

Mr. Bremer was urged by a number of advisers to lower his
profile so as to underscore the Council's independence. He
has withdrawn significantly from asserting any role in
organizing the task of writing a constitution. The Council
will set up a preparatory committee to decide the process
for selecting a drafting committee. 

Great difficulties surround the constitutional question.
Earlier this month, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, one of
the leading clerics of Shiite Islam, warned that the
occupation powers should have no role in the constitutional
process. A number of the council members said they would
work to devise a selection process that would win the
acceptance of the grand ayatollah, who has yet to meet with
any official from the occupation powers. 

The only non-Iraqi to speak at the ceremony was Mr. Vieira
de Mello. "Iraq today finds itself in a unique and
difficult situation: a great country beset by much recent
tragedy, currently without full enjoyment of its
sovereignty," he said. "Today, therefore, your convening
marks the first major development towards the restoration
of Iraq's rightful status as a fully sovereign state." 

The liveliest moments of the news conference occurred when
some council members disputed questions from the news
media. The Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani criticized a BBC
correspondent for suggesting that the interim government
would have limited powers and therefore little legitimacy
among the Iraqis. 

"The Council has a lot of authority, appointing ministers,
diplomats, budgets, security," Mr. Talabani said. He then
accused the BBC of having been biased toward Mr. Hussein's
government during the war. 

The strongest comments were directed at the Arab satellite
channel Al Jazeera. "The satellite channels are expecting
Saddam to come back, but he is in the trash can of
history," Mr. Uloum shouted after someone else questioned
the legitimacy of the interim government. "I am very sorry
these Arab channels betrayed their Arab brothers." 

Only one of the council members, Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi
National Congress, expressed public gratitude to the United
States and Britain for removing the former government. 

A majority of the council members are drawn from the ranks
of Iraqi opposition leaders in exile and Kurdish leaders
from northern Iraq, who led the external fight to topple
Mr. Hussein. 

One Iraqi who carried on that struggle from inside Iraq,
Abdul Karim Mahoud, said today, "Those who were outside of
Iraq represent some Iraqi opposition groups, and we hope
now that they're back in Iraq they will represent some of
the Iraqis in this country." 

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/14/international/worldspecial/14IRAQ.html?ex=1059207459&ei=1&en=af5d30cfcf4c77ae


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