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/ 29 November 2004
Iraq’s independent election commission may have designated January 30 2005 as polling day, but it will be the country’s interim leaders who will decide whether the first free vote in decades goes ahead as planned. ”What we are saying is that we will be ready to hold nationwide elections on January 30,” said Adil al-Lami, the chief electoral officer on the commission, which is responsible for organising the vote.
Iraq’s national conference has finally chosen the country’s first post-Saddam Hussein assembly. After a day of wrangling and confusion, the presiding judges at the conference declared that a government-backed list should be adopted. "This conference is the best thing to happen in Iraq since liberation, but if we muck it up now then the future will look even less rosy," said delegate Ismael Zayer.
Hoda Mohammed Jassim deserved a little luck. A widower with five children, her home in Baghdad was flattened when American troops tried — and failed — to defuse a truck full of ammunition left by Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard. And fortune did, eventually, come her way — but from a most unlikely source.Riding to her rescue came the team from Iraq’s first ”makeover” TV show.
…But the reaction of groups excluded from the interim government could spell trouble. Mainstream Shia and Sunni Arab politicians this week welcomed a new United Nations resolution unanimously agreed by the UN Security Council on Tuesday, which promises broad powers to the interim government after June 30.
Iraq’s interim Foreign Minister, Hoshiyar Zebari, flew to New York on Wednesday night, determined to press the United Nations Security Council for ”as much sovereignty as possible” during talks on Thursday over a new draft resolution. The United States-British proposal, revealed on Tuesday, is designed to underpin the country’s transition from occupation to independence.
While Iraqis find common ground in the aftermath of the latest attacks, the governing council vows to forge ahead with reforms. Still shocked by Tuesday’s devastation, Sadik Jafar Abbas, an unemployed teacher from Kadhimiya, said: ”I don’t think there will be conflict between Sunni and Shia because we are basically united.”
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/ 1 December 2003
American soldiers killed 46 Iraqis and captured eight in three repelled ambushes on US convoys in the central Iraqi city of Samarra on Sunday. At least 18 attackers, five US soldiers and a civilian travelling with the troops were wounded in the deadliest gun battles since the end of the war.
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/ 11 November 2003
The shooting down of a Chinook helicopter — the warhorse in the United States’s operations in Iraq — the weekend before last highlighted the threat of the sizeable quantities of missiles in the country falling into the hands of opposition groups using guerrilla tactics.
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/ 19 February 2003
The lure of rich natural resources proves too good to resist on the subcontinent. A dramatic improvement has taken place in the investment climate in Southern Africa in the past two years, according to a recent report by the BusinessMap Foundation on investment in the South African Development Community
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/ 4 February 2003
The United States has evidence of an orchestrated Iraqi attempt to spy on United Nations weapons inspectors using hidden microphones and agents, allowing Baghdad to stay one step ahead of the search for banned weapons, US sources said this week.