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."
PHOTO: AFP
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.
In Tikrit, the American military continued questioning suspects and poring over documents and photo albums seized in a Tuesday raid, looking for clues to Saddam's whereabouts.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion