Iraq's governing council was set to hold its inaugural session yesterday in a landmark step toward rebuilding the country and preparing the ground for elections as early as next year.
The 25-member council was due to meet in Baghdad at 11am, one of its members said. The milestone meeting would be the first of an executive Iraqi body since US-led forces wrenched the Baath Party from power in April.
PHOTO: AP
The council is charged with mapping Iraq's path toward elections and will have responsibility for appointing ministers and diplomats, approving a budget and selecting a committee to draw up a draft constitution, a UN official said.
Top US civil administrator Paul Bremer, who had initially planned to name a political council with an advisory role, hailed the new body as "the first official step ... on the road to political and economic independence."
"This is the latest sign of progress ... This is not yet a full democracy, but freedom is on the march," he wrote in an editorial in yesterday's New York Times.
The council, he said, "represents all the strands from Iraq's complicated social structure -- Shiites, Sunnis, Arabs, Kurds, men and women, Christians and Turkmens.
"The council will immediately exercise real political power, appointing interim ministers and working with the coalition on policy and budgets.
"The council will establish procedures to write Iraq's new constitution. Once it is ratified by the people, elections can be held and a sovereign Iraqi government will come into being," he said.
The landmark meeting falls almost 35 years to the day after the Baath Party regime came to power in 1968.
It represents a milestone for Iraq, with citizens seething at the slow pace of coalition efforts to restore basic services and security and introduce a democratically elected government as promised.
But amid the first tentative steps toward democracy, Bremer warned that Iraq's fragile security situation was not likely to improve overnight.
"The combination of a broken infrastructure and acts of sabotage could mean a rough summer. We will suffer casualties, as the bitter-enders resort to violence," he wrote.
"We are also braced for an increase in terrorism by non-Iraqis, but no one should doubt our determination to use our power in the face of violent acts."
Coalition forces have blamed diehard remnants of the ousted regime for the steady trickle of attacks that have claimed the lives of at least 31 US soldiers since major combat was declared over on May 1.
The coalition's rebuilding efforts suffer from an Iraqi public skeptical of its motives, despite many welcoming the US policing that they say is all that prevents the capital from falling into anarchy.
But Bremer vowed that the US-led coalition would end its occupation as soon as it could, once a permanent Iraqi government has been established.
"America has no designs on Iraq and its wealth. We will finish our job here and stay not one day longer than necessary," he said.
The credibility of the unelected governing council is considered crucial to coalition efforts to rebuild Iraq and get its oil-based export economy up and running to fund the massive costs of reconstruction.
Responsibility for security will stay in the coalition's hands and Bremer will wield a final veto over all decisions, according to a UN source, who asked not to be named.
The US-led authority has taken pains to give the impression that the council was selected by Iraqis, even if members have had to meet coalition approval.
"I want to share the headache with them. They want responsibility, we will give it to them," Bremer told a recent meeting, according to a source who attended the talks and asked not to be identified.
The body is to comprise 13 Shiites, five Kurds, one Turkmen, one Christian and five Arab Sunnis, designed to reflect Iraq's population.
A minority of those would be Iraqis formerly in exile, while three or four women would be on the body, the UN official said, adding the council would also include five or six representatives from Islamist Sunni or Shiite groups.
NO-LIMITS PARTNERSHIP: ‘The bottom line’ is that if the US were to have a conflict with China or Russia it would likely open up a second front with the other, a US senator said Beijing and Moscow could cooperate in a conflict over Taiwan, the top US intelligence chief told the US Senate this week. “We see China and Russia, for the first time, exercising together in relation to Taiwan and recognizing that this is a place where China definitely wants Russia to be working with them, and we see no reason why they wouldn’t,” US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a US Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing on Thursday. US Senator Mike Rounds asked Haines about such a potential scenario. He also asked US Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse
INSPIRING: Taiwan has been a model in the Asia-Pacific region with its democratic transition, free and fair elections and open society, the vice president-elect said Taiwan can play a leadership role in the Asia-Pacific region, vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) told a forum in Taipei yesterday, highlighting the nation’s resilience in the face of geopolitical challenges. “Not only can Taiwan help, but Taiwan can lead ... not only can Taiwan play a leadership role, but Taiwan’s leadership is important to the world,” Hsiao told the annual forum hosted by the Center for Asia-Pacific Resilience and Innovation think tank. Hsiao thanked Taiwan’s international friends for their long-term support, citing the example of US President Joe Biden last month signing into law a bill to provide aid to Taiwan,
China’s intrusive and territorial claims in the Indo-Pacific region are “illegal, coercive, aggressive and deceptive,” new US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo said on Friday, adding that he would continue working with allies and partners to keep the area free and open. Paparo made the remarks at a change-of-command ceremony at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii, where he took over the command from Admiral John Aquilino. “Our world faces a complex problem set in the troubling actions of the People’s Republic of China [PRC] and its rapid buildup of forces. We must be ready to answer the PRC’s increasingly intrusive and
STATE OF THE NATION: The legislature should invite the president to deliver an address every year, the TPP said, adding that Lai should also have to answer legislators’ questions The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday proposed inviting president-elect William Lai (賴清德) to make a historic first state of the nation address at the legislature following his inauguration on May 20. Lai is expected to face many domestic and international challenges, and should clarify his intended policies with the public’s representatives, KMT caucus secretary-general Hung Meng-kai (洪孟楷) said when making the proposal at a meeting of the legislature’s Procedure Committee. The committee voted to add the item to the agenda for Friday, along with another similar proposal put forward by the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The invitation is in line with Article 15-2