Iraqi Leaders Make History, Not Progress

Shrugging off insurgent mortar fire that rattled the windows, the National Assembly met Wednesday for the first time, with speeches celebrating its democratic origin and diversity but avoiding debate on the effort to form Iraq’s new government.

The nation’s new Shiite Muslim and Kurdish power brokers took a break from weeks of closed-door negotiations to inaugurate the 275-member legislature elected 45 days ago. Leaders hope it will eventually ratify a president, two vice presidents, a prime minister and Cabinet ministers to try to lead the country to victory over a guerrilla insurgency.

Wednesday’s swearing-in session ended quickly, after the political blocs decided to adjourn the assembly so that they could continue bargaining in private over the shape and direction of a “government of national unity.”

Iraqis, who risked violence to vote by the millions on Jan. 30, are growing restive with the political wrangling and more fearful for their lives as insurgents exploit a growing security vacuum. Some legislators joined the criticism Wednesday, with Rajaa Khuzai, a physician and one of 75 women in the assembly, asking outside the meeting hall, “Why should it all be behind closed doors?”

Most assembly members defended the decision to shut the public out of the discussions. “As in any democracy, there will be backroom wheelings and dealings, but in the end it will come before the assembly,” said Barham Salih, a leading Kurdish legislator.

Iraqis got 95 minutes of formal speeches during the first televised glimpse of their nascent democracy.

Turbaned clerics took seats in a vast auditorium alongside women in the long black dresses and head scarves known as abayas. Other women wore long skirts or pants and jackets, with no head covering.

Many men sported business suits, and others wore the swirling robes and headgear of tribal sheiks -- representing a cross-section of an Iraq that is multiethnic and divided over the role of Islam in politics.

In a departure from parliaments during Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship, the new assembly’s 75 Kurdish members took their oaths Wednesday in the Kurdish language that was once forbidden in the halls of government. The session coincided with the anniversary of a 1988 poison gas attack ordered by Hussein on the Kurdish town of Halabja and included prayers in memory of the 5,000 killed there.

Sunni Muslim Arabs, who dominated Iraq until Hussein’s ouster two years ago, were a minority in the chamber, with 25 seats.

“During sessions in Saddam’s time, lawmakers echoed the voice of one man,” said Ahmed Safi, a member of the Shiite-led United Iraqi Alliance, which is Iraq’s leading political force. “Today we are speaking with 275 voices.”

The assembly’s election was a cornerstone of the Bush administration’s plan to hand more responsibility to Iraqi politicians and security forces so U.S. and allied troops can leave.

In Washington, President Bush called Wednesday’s session “a bright moment” in a process that is supposed to lead to the drafting of a new constitution, followed by another national election as early as this fall.

But without a government in place, the assembly cannot move forward on drafting the constitution or work to restore security to a country plagued by violence.

Two mortar rounds fired from outside Baghdad’s heavily guarded Green Zone exploded harmlessly a few hundred yards from the convention center where the assembly met. They shook the building and caused lights to flicker as lawmakers were filing into the auditorium, protected by U.S. helicopter gunships and rings of security that closed bridges and stopped traffic more than a mile away.

About 35 miles northeast of the capital, the driver of a car packed with explosives blew himself up and killed four Iraqi solders at an Iraqi army checkpoint, the U.S. command reported.

Inside the auditorium, a resolute mood prevailed. Although many of those who gave speeches are jockeying for positions in the new government, they sounded confident of reaching a compromise.

Many spoke with reverence of their sense that they were making history.

Ghazi Ajil Yawer, president of the interim U.S.-appointed government that is to be replaced, said the assembly’s swearing-in made Wednesday “a blessed day.” In the effort to cobble together a broadly representative government, he declared, “this is a decisive stage. Either we all win or, God forbid, we all lose.”

“Today is the birthday of democracy in Iraq,” Younadam Kanna, one of six Assyrian Christians in the assembly, told reporters after the session.

The Shiite alliance and a coalition of Kurdish parties won enough seats for the two-thirds vote in the assembly that is required to form a government. But their efforts to divvy up government posts and agree on key issues have bogged down. A major sticking point is the degree of autonomy that Kurds should have in Iraq’s three predominantly Kurdish northern provinces, where they maintain their own militia.

The two major blocs decided to go ahead with Wednesday’s long-scheduled assembly session in the face of mounting public impatience.

“This is a new experience. You have to be a bit patient,” Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurdish lawmaker who is foreign minister in the interim government, told reporters. “But today was a moving moment. This will be the first peaceful transfer of power in Iraq in many, many years.”

Iraq had relatively free parliamentary elections during the 37-year monarchy that fell in 1958, but the lawmakers had little power.

Wednesday’s session served as a forum for political leaders to stake out their positions or make conciliatory gestures.

Shiite alliance leader Abdelaziz Hakim, wearing a black turban, gave a short speech that was interlaced with prayer and appealed to God 14 times, calling for a government that would “respect the Muslim identity of the Iraqi people” and put an end to the U.S.-led occupation. The long-repressed Shiites favor a bigger role for Islam in public life.

Iyad Allawi, the interim prime minister whose coalition finished a distant third in the voting, touted progress during his nine months in office. He said Iraq had “started from zero to build up government institutions and stand up against terrorism.”

Allawi thanked the United States and its coalition partners for “rescuing Iraq from a terrible regime.”

“Much honorable Iraqi blood has been shed to attain these goals,” he said, calling for “the inclusion of all the Iraqi people into the political process and in the government establishment.”

Allawi, a secular Shiite, was echoed by Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani, who said, “There can be no stability in Iraq unless we build this country with consensus among all components of its people.”

Whether such sentiment can be sustained in the rough and tumble of coalition politics is far from certain.

The two major blocs have broadened their talks to include Allawi’s coalition and reached out to the Sunni Arabs, the minority in which the insurgency is rooted. Sunnis in the assembly are expected to get the post of assembly speaker and one of the vice presidencies, but are also pushing for Cabinet ministries and a major role in writing the constitution.

“We will see what else they are going to offer us,” said Hachim Hassani, a Sunni who is the interim minister of industry. “When it comes to the practical things, we will see how sincere they are.”

Times staff writers Alissa J. Rubin, Raheem Salman, Suhail Ahmad and Caesar Ahmed contributed to this report.