The United States-led occupation force in Iraq on Tuesday dissolved the governing council that it set up after toppling Saddam Hussein 14 months ago and installed an new interim government as the United Nations Security Council prepared to debate a resolution on the country’s future.
US forces meanwhile struck a new truce with the militia of nationalist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in the city of Najaf, while Germany, a leading opponent of the war, said it was ready to help the US secure a new UN Security Council resolution on the future of Iraq.
At least three people were killed by car bombs and mortar rounds as the government was sworn in with a 46-year-old tribal magnate and businessman, Ghazi al-Yawar, as its titular head in the now largely ceremonial post of Iraqi president.
Yawar was appointed minutes after the preferred choice of the US-led forces, 81-year-old Adnan Pachachi, was named but refused the post.
In his first news conference as president, Yawar said Iraqis ”look forward to being granted full sovereignty through a Security Council resolution to enable us to rebuild a free, independent, democratic and federal, unified homeland”.
The man who will hold most power in Iraq, 58-year-old Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, announced his government line-up, saying that ”after 35 years of tyrannical regime … we are starting now our march towards sovereignty and democracy”.
Allawi, a former dissident member of Saddam’s Ba’ath Party with strong ties to the US CIA, was appointed on Friday.
US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said the formation of the interim government is a ”positive step for the future of a free Iraq”.
The US has said it will transfer sovereignty to the interim government on June 30, but it is unclear how long US troops will remain in Iraq and how much control — if any — the government will have over them and over the country’s oil revenues.
Hoshyar Zebari, who retained the position of foreign minister in the 36-member government, said before leaving for the UN in New York that he will also insist on full sovereignty in talks with Security Council members.
”This will be the main target of our discussion. We want the transfer of sovereignty to be full and to be genuine and for the Iraqi people to feel it is a real change,” he said.
The council appeared set for heated debate this week on a US-British draft resolution, but in Berlin an official said Chancellor Gerhard Schröder had told US President George Bush that ”Germany is ready to engage and cooperate in a constructive manner”.
Germany joined the council for a two-year term in January last year and angered Bush by joining France in fiercely opposing the invasion of Iraq.
But, the official said, recent talks ”have shown there are very good relations between the US on one hand and the chancellor and Germany on the other”, despite Germany’s refusal to commit troops to the occupying force.
In Paris, a spokesperson for French President Jacques Chirac described the draft as ”a good working document, but one which must be improved … on the issue of the need for a real transfer of sovereignty to the interim Iraqi government after June 30”.
Britain, the staunchest ally of the US, welcomed the new government, as did Poland, another major contributor of troops to the occupation force, and Turkey, which shares a long border with Iraq through mountainous regions peopled by Kurds.
A spokesperson for British Prime Minister Tony Blair said the government is ”not dominated by one individual or group but by representatives of the country as a whole” and it will ”lead the country from occupation first of all to independence, then to democracy in January next year”.
The optimistic words glossed over days, if not weeks, of acrimonious wrangling over the make-up of the government between the chief US civilian administrator, Paul Bremer, the chief UN envoy to Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi, and members of the outgoing governing council.
After refusing the presidency, Pachachi told a news conference that he was not a stooge of the US-led forces, formally known as the coalition provisional authority (CPA), but he had been opposed by ”certain parties” because of his ”democratic and liberal” views.
”It is a lie … that the CPA wanted to impose me as president,” he said. ”It’s wrong, I was never the CPA candidate, they had another candidate.”
Outside the heavily fortified compound where the CPA and the governing council had their headquarters, at least three security guards were killed and 20 people were wounded in a car bomb attack on the offices of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
The governor of Najaf meanwhile said that US troops will halt patrols in the city and withdraw to five bases in the city under a new truce with Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army.
”The coalition forces have agreed that within a 72-hour truce, all Mehdi militiamen are to pull out of Najaf. All Mehdi Army elements who are not residents of Najaf will leave the city,” Adnan al-Zorfi said.
Militiamen from elsewhere in Iraq will return to their cities and hand over their weapons to centres set up by coalition forces, while Iraqi forces will take over responsibility for security, he said.
About 20 militiamen, two US soldiers and an Iraqi mother were killed in fighting late on Sunday near the neighbouring Shi’ite city of Kufa in breach of a five-day-old truce. — Sapa-AFP