More than 200 delegates from inside and outside Iraq, stressing a theme of unity in a divided land, met yesterday behind a wall of US Army tanks guarding former president Saddam Hussein's showcase convention hall to search for agreement on a new government to replace the ousted dictator.
The meeting came a day after the US military arrested the self-appointed mayor of Baghdad, Mohammed Mohsen al-Zubaidi.
Al-Zubaidi was a returned exile associated with the opposition Iraqi National Congress who had declared himself mayor of Baghdad without sanction from US occupation authorities. US Central Command on Sunday accused him of "subversion."
His activities, including designation of "committees" to run city affairs, had complicated the efforts of postwar US civil administrator Jay Garner to reorganize political life. A US military spokesman said al-Zubaidi was arrested "for exercising authority which was not his."
Yesterday, Shia and Sunni Muslim clerics in their robes, Kurds from the north, tribal chiefs in Arab headdresses and Westernized exiles in expensive suits all assembled for the one-day political conference, second in a series expected to extend well into May.
"We hope we can form a unified government, one that reflects the entire spectrum of Iraq," said Ahmad Jaber al-Awadi, a representative of the newly formed Iraqi Independent Democrats Movement.
One prominent exile, Saad al-Bazzaz, said many delegates had discussed the possibility of a "presidential council" of several members, rather than naming a single leader for Iraq.
Many focused on the need for security in a country where the US-British invasion and ouster of Saddam three weeks ago touched off a rampage of looting, arson and general lawlessness.
"The lack of security threatens our newborn democracy. Security must be restored for this experience to survive," Saadoun Dulaimi, a returned exiled politician, told fellow delegates.
After reading from the Koran, the approximately 250 delegates, which included several women, were welcomed by Garner. The meetings are aimed at "a democratic government which represents all people, all religions, all tribes," Garner said.
Garner noted that yesterday, April 28, was Saddam's 66th birthday -- for many years an Iraqi holiday filled with official celebration and enforced adulation of the authoritarian leader, who was "unanimously" endorsed by voters over the years in unopposed "elections."
On a downtown Baghdad street, an Iraqi air force colonel, Hussein al-Khafaji, took note of how different this birthday was.
"Whenever we had those elections for president, everyone voted for him 100 percent," al-Khafaji told a reporter. "And today nothing will happen, and this will prove that none of us liked him, not a one."
USA Today, citing a Pentagon official, reported that former Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz told US interrogators he saw Saddam alive after two coalition air strikes intended to kill him.
Aziz surrendered to coalition forces overnight Thursday.
In a sign of new cooperation, officials from the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, an Iran-based group of Shiite Muslim exiles, joined in the Baghdad conference. The council had shunned the first such meeting, on April 15 in southern Iraq, in protest of its US sponsorship.
Coming home after years abroad, some Iraqi delegates hugged and kissed.
"In Baghdad?" one delegate asked another in disbelief. "Yes, in Baghdad," the other replied.
Thousands of demonstrators marched through the sun-baked capital's streets, meanwhile, calling for unity of Shia and Sunni Muslims, of Iraqi Arabs and Iraqi Kurds.
In a symptom of the disorganization and communications problems that have plagued the US occupation in its first days, dozens of delegates couldn't reach the hall immediately. Instead, they drove in circles around traffic-choked central Baghdad, repeatedly blocked by Army checkpoints from entering the site. The opening was delayed by two hours.
As he sought entry to the conference, al-Bazzaz, a former Iraqi publisher, said he expected the discussions to produce a "a sort of government, a sort of authority."
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