Iraqi Anti-Hussein Groups Elect an Executive Council
Pro-democracy groups from Iraq elected a 17-member executive council on Saturday to carry out decisions of a new “national assembly.”
The groups, under the banner of the Iraqi National Congress, want to replace President Saddam Hussein’s regime with a parliamentary democracy. More than 200 delegates from dozens of fractious anti-Saddam groups have been meeting in Vienna since Wednesday.
But the meeting is being boycotted by some major opposition groups, including the Communists and the Iran-backed Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the most important Islamic faction.
Meeting organizers say some groups have stayed away because of disagreements over the future of Iraq after Hussein.
But organizers said the meeting represented the opposition’s best attempt to unite against Hussein.
“We can now speak as a credible voice through this assembly,” Laith Kubba, a congress spokesman and executive committee member, said in a statement.
On Friday, the congress elected a 68-member “national assembly” and agreed to work together to oust Hussein’s regime.
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