After weeks of struggling to choose a leader, Iraq's US-picked interim government named its first president on Wednesday -- a Shiite Muslim from a party banned by former president Saddam Hussein. US troops, meanwhile, pressed the hunt for the ousted dictator and officers said it was "just a matter of time" before he is caught.
"He's going to start making mistakes, and we're going to catch him," a US Army spokeswoman, Major Josslyn Aberle, said in Tikrit, Saddam's hometown.
"We estimate he's not staying more than four hours at the same place," she said. "But the man's been a master of hiding all his life."
Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite Muslim and chief spokesman for the Islamic Dawa Party, which was banned during Saddam's rule, was picked to be the first of nine men who will serve one-month stints to lead postwar Iraq. He will hold the presidency in August.
Selecting a president had been a contentious issue as ethnic and political groups wrestled for a share of power. In the end, the 25-member Governing Council decided to rotate the presidency alphabetically among the nine members chosen on Tuesday.
The council will control spending and set in place the mechanism for writing a new constitution. A council source said that a Cabinet will be named soon.
Members of the council met with World Bank president James Wolfensohn, who said the institution must first decide what constitutes a legally recognized government before it can lend money to Iraq for reconstruction.
After the council met in the Convention Center of Baghdad, a member lashed out at Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa for failing to recognize the interim government's authority.
He said the council would not send representatives to the Cairo, Egypt-based organization, the region's most important, if often ineffectual, political body.
Moussa, in a CNN television interview at the UN, stood by his assessment of the council, saying it was "a step in the right direction" but not representative of the Iraqi people.
The council decision came a day after an audiotape attributed to Saddam called it "good news" that his sons Uday and Qusay Hussein were killed in a July 22 shootout with US soldiers because they now were martyrs.
The tape appeared to erase any remaining doubt among Iraqis that the feared brothers were dead. A CIA official said Wednesday on condition of anonymity that the tape appeared to be authentic.
Meanhile, one US soldier was killed and two wounded in a gun attack on their tactical operations centre northeast of Baghdad, the US army said yesterday.
A military spokesman said the soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division were attacked around 11:45pm yesterday. The death brings to 51 the number of US soldiers killed by attacks since Washington declared major combat over on May 1. In the last two weeks alone, 18 have been killed.
In far northern Iraq, US officers said they found evidence that non-Iraqi fighters are among guerrillas attacking Americans. The officers said on condition of anonymity that they were finding rocket-propelled grenades wired to timers, a weapon used against coalition forces by insurgents in Afghanistan.
Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist organization and remnants of the Taliban are believed responsible for the continued attacks on US forces in Afghanistan. But it was unclear what role the foreigners are playing in the insurgency in Iraq.
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