25 Iraqis Chosen to Shape the Future

When the first Iraqi leadership since the fall of Saddam Hussein is named today, it will not -- in public, anyway -- be midwifed or anointed by the U.S.-led occupation authority.

The 22 men and three women are meant to be a rough mosaic representing the country’s major ethnic and sectarian communities. They are to step forward as self-appointed policymakers for their country as it embarks on a process that is hoped to lead to an interim administration, a constitutional convention, elections and, finally, a permanent independent and democratic government.

The chief U.S. civil administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, and his staff, who were involved in nine weeks of intensive consultations to bring about the new governing council, are to take a back seat in today’s proceedings, leaving it to the Iraqis to introduce themselves to their compatriots and the world media and to spell out their goals and intentions.

Last-minute details of the council -- which will work in partnership with the U.S.-led occupation authority -- were hammered out Saturday in an 8 1/2-hour meeting held in Hussein’s former Republican Palace.

According to several Iraqi sources, the new council will comprise 25 people, 13 of whom are from the Shiite Muslim majority in Iraq that was discriminated against and suppressed during 36 years of Baath Party rule. Shiites make up about 60% of Iraq’s 24 million people.

Sunni Muslim Arabs, who dominated Iraqi politics under Hussein, will receive five seats, the same as ethnic Kurds who have had 12 years of de facto self-government in northern Iraq. The final two seats will go to smaller minority groups -- one Christian and one Turkmen, said a member of the international committee of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, Sherwan Dizayee.

Among the 25 are clerics, including Shiite leader Abdelaziz Hakim, the brother of Ayatollah Mohammed Bakr Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, as well as traditional tribal leaders.

Adnan Pachachi, the 80-year-old former foreign minister and U.N. envoy of Iraq from a prominent family -- a living link to Iraq’s republican past before the 1968 Baath Party takeover of the oil-rich country -- also has agreed to serve.

The council is coming into being three months and four days after U.S. troops triumphantly entered the center of Baghdad, with Hussein -- if some anecdotal reports can be believed -- riding away in a convoy of Mercedeses just ahead of them.

It also comes just days before Bremer’s mid-July target for the creation of the council, reflecting eagerness on the part of both the Americans and the Iraqis to launch the transition to full self-government and give Iraqis a voice in their day-to-day affairs.

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A Buffer for U.S.

At a time of mounting U.S. casualties amid the beginnings of organized guerrilla warfare against the occupying troops, and of discord over rampant crime and the slow rate of restoring basic services, the council is expected to act as a buffer -- deflecting accusations in Iraq that the United States wishes only to occupy the country and worries in the U.S. that Americans are getting bogged down with no clear exit strategy.

“Saddam let loose 30,000 criminals from prison. How can the Americans alone fight them?” asked Basil Nakeeb, a supporter of Pachachi.

“We need Iraqis to handle these people -- people who know them.”

As the occupying powers recognized by the United Nations, the U.S.-British coalition provisional authority will retain the ultimate power in Iraq until the Iraqis draft a final constitution and hold elections, Bremer has said.

The council had a rocky genesis. Iraqi politicians were miffed when Bremer arrived in Iraq in early May to take over the occupation authority and rejected a previous proposal to hold a national conference to name an interim government. Instead, Bremer proposed an advisory body that would be dubbed the “political council” to act as an intermediary between the Iraqi population and the occupying powers.

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Politicians Felt Cheated

The Iraqi politicians felt that they were being cheated out of their promised interim government. About the same time, U.S.-led coalition forces began facing an increasingly restive and sullen Iraqi population, with some people staging anti-American demonstrations and, in some cases, applauding attacks on U.S. troops that the U.S. has blamed on remnants of the former Baathist regime.

In the weeks of consultations that followed, Bremer appeared to come around to a view that the council needed more popular legitimacy to have credibility with the Iraqi public. He agreed to spell out more executive power for the council and renamed it in Arabic majlis al hakumaa -- governing or government council -- to emphasize that it is a first step toward restoring a full-fledged Iraqi government.

Under terms defined in consultations Friday and Saturday, the council is entitled to nominate and supervise interim ministers for all the government ministries, oversee broad policy areas such as security, education, health, budget and national finances, and to appoint Iraqis to represent the country internationally. The council will also set in motion the mechanism for drafting a permanent constitution, a process expected to take about one year.

Although the council is to have 25 members, its core remains the alliance of seven political parties who opposed Hussein’s government, mainly from exile. Leaders of the seven parties have agreed to serve on the council and lend it their personal prestige.

They are Massoud Barzani of the Kurdistan Democratic Party; Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan; Ahmad Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress; Iyad Allawi of the Iraqi National Accord; Hakim of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution; Ibrahim Jafari of the Islamic Dawa Party; and Arab Democratic leader Nasir Chaderchi.

“It is a good start,” said Mohammed Tawfik, a member of the PUK leadership. “Under occupation, we could not expect more than that.”

Bremer, in an op-ed piece in the Sunday New York Times, said, “The council will immediately exercise real political power, appointing interim ministers and working with the coalition on policy and budgets.

“At the same time, the council will establish procedures to write Iraq’s new constitution. Once it is ratified by the people, elections can be held and a sovereign Iraqi government will come into being,” he said.

Both Bremer’s people and the Iraqi politicians appeared to want to fudge over the question of who actually appointed the members. In the end, it boiled down to a negotiation -- with all participants signing off on a mutually agreed list of names.

Dizayee, of the KDP, predicted that the council would instantly have the backing of the “vast majority” of Iraqis because of its diversity and balance.

“Iraqis are looking forward to this day,” he said. “They have been dreaming for so many years to have a government run by not only one man.”