The G8 powerful industrial nations yesterday papered over divisions on the Iraq war a day after Iraqi political leaders gave a swift rebuff to plans by the US-led authority in Baghdad to appoint the first elements of a new government.
At a meeting with the seven major political groups on Sunday, Paul Bremer, the US official running the country, presented a plan under which he would appoint a political council of between 25 and 30 Iraqis to form the core of a future government. But the parties on Monday insisted on a more democratic process.
"We think this is not the right thing to do," said Hamed al-Bayati, a spokesman for the powerful Shia religious party, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
He was speaking after the parties met in a Baghdad hotel to discuss Bremer's plan.
"We believe according to the UN resolution the Iraqi people should select their own administration in consultation with the allies," Bayati said. "This is a joint view of all the parties. We agreed we are going to go on with our own choice, which is an Iraqi mechanism to select an Iraqi administration."
The G8 said in a final statement from their summit in Evian, France, that they "share the conviction that the time has now come to build peace and reconstruct Iraq."
Half the G8 opposed the war and the statement avoided any possible retroactive approval of the US-led military action that overthrew Saddam in April.
The G8 groups the US, Britain, Japan and Italy -- who supported the attack on Iraq -- and Germany, France, Canada and Russia, who opposed it.
"Our shared objective is a fully sovereign, stable and democratic Iraq, at peace with its neighbors and firmly on the road to progress," the statement said.
Under the latest UN Security Council resolution on Iraq, approved a fortnight ago, Iraqis have a clear right to choose their political future.
Bayati said the Iraqi politicians would meet Bremer again as early as Friday to present their objections. Originally, the US-led authority had proposed a national political conference in Baghdad at which hundreds of delegates from dozens of different parties would elect a ruling council. That idea now appears to have been shelved in an attempt to accelerate the process of forming a new government.
Already insiders within what is now titled the coalition provisional authority have admitted that an Iraqi government will not take power for several months, perhaps a year, because of the huge task of reconstruction.
The authority has already found that some of its decisions are highly unpopular. On Monday a crowd of at least 3,000 former soldiers gathered at the heavily-guarded gates of the Republican Palace, where Bremer's authority is based, to protest at the decision to dissolve the 400,000-strong Iraqi army.
Many of the soldiers in the crowd threatened to begin an armed resistance against the US-led military, even using suicide bombers, unless they were given new jobs.
In a rare admission, Bremer accepted that the dissolution of the military had hurt many families.
"We are in the process of reviewing the situation, which we understand has caused considerable pain," he said.
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