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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Wednesday, April 16, 2003

Iraqi factions meet to plan postwar rule

By Peter Smolowitz and Andrea Gerlin
Knight Ridder News Service

BAGHDAD, Iraq — In their first tentative steps toward democracy after decades of dictatorship, Iraqi religious and political leaders opened talks in the ancient city of Ur yesterday aimed at forging a postwar government.

A woman carried her daughter after passing a checkpoint on the bridge leading into Tikrit yesterday. U.S. Marines started allowing residents to return to the city.

Associated Press

Not much was accomplished. The delegates convened in a tent several hours behind schedule, faced a boycott by key factional leaders, suffered the scorn of thousands of nearby protesters and broke up after agreeing to meet again in 10 days.

Still, it was a start toward self-government, and however halting, it came only one day after U.S. military officers declared that major combat in Iraq was over.

Elsewhere in Iraq, an eerie peace settled over war-torn Baghdad as Iraqi police helped U.S. Marines restore order. In Kut, hundreds of protesters blocked U.S. Marines from entering the city hall to meet a radical anti-American Shiite cleric. And in the port city of Umm Qasr, 10 civic leaders functioning as a rudimentary "town council" under British supervision held a press conference on getting their town up and running again.

But it was the meeting in the Mesopotamian city of Ur, the biblical birthplace of Abraham, that symbolized Iraq's state today: Its tentative first step toward democracy was marred by boycotts, infighting and protests.

About 80 Iraqi exiles and others just freed from Saddam's rule gathered with U.S. sponsors. White House envoy Zalmay Khalilzad told delegates that America holds "no interest, absolutely no interest, in ruling Iraq."

But in the neighboring city of Nasiriyah, thousands of Shiites rallied against American plans for an interim government, chanting "no to America, no to Saddam!"

"The Iraqi people don't trust this. You saw today what happened in Nasiriyah with the demonstrations," said Abu Bilal al Adib, a spokesman for the Dawa (Islamic Call) Party in Tehran. His group had been invited but refused to attend. "Our people are unhappy with what the Americans are doing; they want to be independent."

Iraqi women and a child watched warily as U.S. special forces moved into Baghdad's district of Kazemiya to search for illegal weapons yesterday.

Associated Press

Also boycotting the event was the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a major Shiite group. "We will not accept if they even stay one day in Iraq," said Abdul Aziz Hakim, the group's second in command.

Before the meeting began, the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic party, Iraq's largest Kurdish group, had accused the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan of making a grab for the oil-rich city of Kirkuk in violation of a U.S.-brokered accord.

If the protests, bad blood and sit-outs showed how difficult the transition to democracy may be, many still hailed the Ur gathering as a historic event.

It was held under a golden tent on a makeshift U.S. airbase next to the ziggurat ruin, a 4,000-year-old terraced pyramid of the ancient Assyirans and Babylonians. Some Iraqi exiles cried as they hugged one another. One dropped to his knees and kissed the ground.

"Saddam reduced the country to such a state that it was necessary for people to sell off personal possessions," said Hatem Mukhliss, an Iraqi exile. "Now it's time to take our country back." In his speech, he quoted John F. Kennedy on serving one's country.

At the meeting's end, Iraqis were urged to move forward by Jay Garner, the former U.S. Army general who is in charge of the postwar transition to self-rule. He assured Iraqis that the allied coalition would rebuild Iraq but that their own political development had to go on simultaneously.

"It's the beginning of a process to restore government," British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said in Qatar. "In Iraq, we have people of immense skills. It's not a Third World, it's a developed world — it's the cradle of civilization."

Yesterday's session was to be the first in a series. Details of the next meeting, on April 25, have yet to be worked out. U.S. officials said Iraqis must present more definite proposals for the Iraqi Interim Authority, which is to help the country through its transition to full self-rule. "We may have some ideas of our own we'll share," the official said. We MAY," he said, with emphasis.