Iraqi Council Leader Pushes for Direct Vote

Shiite Muslim cleric Abdelaziz Hakim used his maiden news conference Wednesday as Iraqi Governing Council president to push for direct elections to select a national assembly, despite deep U.S. doubts about the proposal.

“A provisional national assembly should be elected by the Iraqi people, and this assembly should choose the government,” said Hakim, the first cleric to hold the rotating presidency of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council.

The council is in the midst of a heated debate over how to choose the assembly, which is to take office in June and help govern Iraq for the next couple of years as it drafts a new constitution and prepares to elect a permanent government.

The United States has proposed using provincial caucuses for selecting assembly members, but Shiite religious leaders, including Hakim, are pressing hard for direct elections because Shiites make up 60% of Iraq’s population and are likely to dominate the body.

A number of council members, especially those who represent minority groups, believe that the country is not ready for elections because it lacks voter rolls and security.

In the latest effort to boost security, the Governing Council and the U.S.-led occupation administration have agreed to form a paramilitary force made up of members of militias attached to Iraq’s five major political parties.

The paramilitary force would act mainly as a rapid-response team dedicated initially to tracking down and apprehending insurgents. Unlike other Iraqi armed forces -- including the army, the police and the Civil Defense Corps, most of whom are receiving basic training from the American military -- this group would consist of already well-trained militiamen.

Officials also hope that the militiamen, with their intimate knowledge of Iraqi society, would be better at recognizing any “foreign fighters” contributing to instability in the country.

The paramilitary force would comprise fighters from militias affiliated with the Kurdish Democratic Party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress, the Iraqi National Accord, and Hakim’s Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

Efforts to form a paramilitary force had stalled for months because the five parties had been reluctant to agree to U.S. demands that their militias be melded into a single organization under Iraqi -- rather than party -- command.

U.S. officials have feared that militia members would gather information on one another instead of focusing on defeating insurgents.

“They cannot be serving to represent political parties, or a particular militia,” said Dan Senor, chief spokesman for L. Paul Bremer III, head of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, the occupation administration.

Initially, the force will have about 1,000 members and will be part of the Civil Defense Corps, under the aegis of the Interior Ministry.

It will coordinate with coalition forces, “but eventually the coalition will fade away and it will be an Iraqi operation,” said an official close to the CPA.

In other developments Wednesday, Hakim announced that the Governing Council will move ahead with the establishment of a human rights court to try those accused of abuses under Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Other Governing Council members said the court would try some of the most wanted members of Hussein’s government being held by the U.S., as well as other high-ranking Baath Party members in custody.

Hakim, 53, who for years collected data on human rights abuses in Iraq, spent the last 20 years in Iran. He is the brother of Ayatollah Mohammed Bakr Hakim, who was killed in an August mosque blast in the city of Najaf.

Meanwhile Wednesday, the U.S. Army defended its assertion that 54 insurgents were killed Sunday during fierce battles in Samarra, north of Baghdad.

“I trust the reports of my soldiers,” Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said at a Baghdad briefing. “There’s no reason to doubt what these soldiers saw. There’s no reason to doubt what the soldiers reported.”

Hospital officials in Samarra put the death toll closer to eight and the number of wounded at more than 50. Residents said those killed included noncombatants, among them an elderly Iranian pilgrim.

The U.S. identified all of those killed as enemy fighters. During the battle, the Army said, many insurgents donned head scarves and clothing identified with the Fedayeen Saddam, a paramilitary group loyal to Hussein.

U.S. commanders speculated that many slain fighters’ bodies were removed by comrades or sympathizers. “I can’t imagine why the enemy would want to bring a dead body to a hospital,” Kimmitt said.

In other developments, Kimmitt said, coalition forces in Baghdad detained a top aide to Muqtader Sadr, a firebrand Shiite cleric who has openly espoused anti-U.S. views. Amar Yasseri, who heads operations for Sadr in the capital’s Sadr City neighborhood, was “believed responsible” for an Oct. 9 ambush in the slum that left two U.S. soldiers dead.

Also Wednesday, 82nd Airborne Division troops in the city of Fallouja detained a former Iraqi general, Daham Mahmedi, the military said. He is suspected of directing anti-U.S. activities in Fallouja, the military said.

--- UNPUBLISHED NOTE ---

In stories after April 9, 2004, Shiite cleric Muqtader Sadr is correctly referred to as Muqtada Sadr.

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