WASHINGTON, May 14 - The Bush administration, struggling to cope with a recent intensification of insurgent violence in Iraq, has received signals from some radical Sunni Arab leaders that they would abandon fighting if the new Shiite majority government gave Sunnis a significant voice in the country's political evolution, administration officials said this week.

The officials said American contacts with what they called "rejectionist" elements among Sunni Arabs - the governing minority under Saddam Hussein, which has generated much of the insurgency, and largely boycotted January's elections - showed that many wanted to join in the political system, including the writing of a permanent constitution.

But the political feuding that delayed the formation of the government for nearly three months after the elections has so far blocked the kind of concessions the Sunnis are demanding.

In particular, the Americans are pressing for Shiite hard-liners in the new Iraqi government to consider conciliatory gestures that would include allowing former Baath Party members to serve in the government, granting pensions to former army officers who served under Mr. Hussein and setting up courts that would try detainees seized in the anti-insurgency drive. Many of the detainees have been held for a year or more without legal recourse.

The government that took office almost two weeks ago under Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari had a faltering start, leaving several cabinet posts earmarked for Sunni Arabs vacant, then filling them with officials - including a defense minister - who were rejected by some hard-line Sunni representatives.

These critics have said that the nominees, though Sunni Arabs, were effectively pawns of the two Iran-backed religious parties at the head of the Shiite alliance that won the elections and now dominates the government.

The government has 35 cabinet members, 7 of them Sunnis. That makes their representation nearly proportionate; Sunni Arabs are estimated at 20 percent of Iraq's population of 25 million.

But misgivings about the Sunni voice in the new cabinet were compounded this week, when the National Assembly appointed a 55-member committee to draft the constitution. The panel has a 28-member majority from the Shiite alliance, and only two Sunni Arabs - both from parties that have shown little sign of drawing broad support in the Sunni Arab population.

American officials say that while some Sunni groups will never lay down their arms, others have begun to recognize that their refusal to participate in the political process was a mistake. Meanwhile, the United States, battling a seemingly intractable insurgency, has begun to forcefully press for a political solution.

Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Pentagon news conference this week that the goal of the intensified insurgent attacks was to discredit the new government.

Senior American officers in Iraq and others in the Pentagon said the latest violence, which has killed nearly 500 people so far this month, had not prompted them to change their strategy of capturing or killing insurgents, cutting off their financing, pre-empting their attacks and training more Iraqi forces.

Rather, they said, the attacks reinforced their view that quelling the insurgency would also require an effective political strategy to stabilize areas where insurgents have been most active, including Baghdad and Mosul, two of Iraq's biggest cities.

To that end, American officials said, the United States is urging Dr. Jaafari, the new Iraqi leader, to renew talks with a coalition of Sunni Arab groups known as the National Dialogue Council, which has links to elements in the insurgency who it says are ready to explore openings toward a political settlement.

But that approach also is fraught with difficulties, partly because of doubts that the council has the influence with the insurgents that it claims, and partly because the council's leaders have been deeply angered by raids by Iraqi forces on its Baghdad offices in the past 10 days. The raids resulted in the arrests of more than a dozen people, including some who had played a role in earlier contacts with the Shiite leaders.

The attitude of insurgent leaders is another unknown, not least because American officials, two years into the war, acknowledge that they have little understanding of who the leaders are, apart from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant and operative of Al Qaeda who has claimed responsibility for many of the insurgents' suicide bombings, kidnappings and beheadings.

In reaching out to Sunni Arab intermediaries in the past year, the American goal has been to isolate Islamic terrorists, and die-hard groups intent on restoring a semblance of the Sunni despotism of Mr. Hussein, at least some of whom are believed to have rallied around Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a vice president under Mr. Hussein and one of the few major leaders of that era still at large.

Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution who was an adviser to the American occupation last year, said in an interview that those who might be willing to negotiate include some leading Sunni religious figures, as well as tribal Sunni tribal leaders and former officials in Mr. Hussein's ruling Baath Party who aspire to "reconstruct a kind of neo-Baath Party purged of Saddam's influence."

"Many of these elements have been signaling for a long time that they're ready to participate if they can be given a clear place in the system," Mr. Diamond said. By boycotting the election, he added, "they shot themselves in the foot, but they're still knocking on the door."

The aim of talks with the National Dialogue Council, the Americans said, would be to draw Sunni Arab leaders with credibility in their own community into the new governing structure. But the American suggestions that the Jaafari government step up its outreach to Sunni Arabs have met a prickly response.

Laith Kubba, a senior aide to Dr. Jaafari, said in a telephone interview in Baghdad on Saturday that the new government's policies would not be driven by Americans.

"This is not the business of the U.S.," said Mr. Kubba, who spent years of exile in the United States during the Hussein years. "They can express concerns, they can give their views when asked, but this is a process managed by Iraqis and the prime minister is on top of it. He has led the efforts to build a dialogue with the Sunnis."

Still, Mr. Kubba hinted at something that has worried American officials who have maintained close contact with the new government: the potential spoiler's role adopted by senior figures in the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, known as Sciri, a religious party that is the dominant partner, with Mr. Jaafari's party, Dawa, in the new administration.

Many Iraqis say Sciri's leader, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who holds no government post, may yet prove the decisive voice on crucial policy issues - like Sunni involvement. Mr. Kubba described the Hakim group as "a mixed bag," but acknowledged that some had what he described as "a partisan mentality."

Mr. Kubba said there would be efforts to draw more Sunnis into the writing of the constitution. But he stressed that that how that would happen was a matter for the 275-member National Assembly, not for the Jaafari government alone.

With only 17 Sunni Arabs in the assembly, one idea under discussion is appointing consultative groups that would not have to be drawn from assembly members. The prime minister, he said, "wants a much broader participation than a small circle of deputies talking among themselves."

A further point, Mr. Kubba said, was that the interim constitution laid down last year set procedures for adoption of a new constitution that establish a veto if a two-thirds majority of voters in 3 of Iraq's 18 provinces vote against it. Sunni Arabs, with heavy majorities in Salahuddin and Nineveh Provinces north of Baghdad and Anbar Province to the west, would thus have the potential to doom any constitution they disapprove of in the referendum that the interim constitution requires by Oct. 15, Mr. Kubba said.

For American officials in Baghdad, the issue of the future power balance between the Shiite and Sunni communities is a powder keg. For nearly a year, Iraq has had a sovereign government, and, after the January elections, one with a popular mandate.

American officials insist that they can recommend, but not command, steps that they believe will open the way to negotiations with the insurgents. "The Iraqis are going to have to figure this out for themselves," said an American official in Baghdad. "But what I'm seeing is a new willingness of people who used to be rejectionist to join the process and a new willingness by the government to talk to them that I did not see last year."

But the Americans say that it is far from clear how much influence groups like the National Dialogue Council, composed of 31 Sunni groups, have on insurgent leaders - and uncertain, too, whether even the council's leaders believe in the kind of majority-rule democracy that the United States wants as its legacy in Iraq.

The council's secretary general, Fakhri al-Qaisi, a Baghdad dentist with a long history of involvement in conservative Islamic groups, contests even the demographics that suggest that any majority-rule government in Iraq will have to be led by Shiites. He argues that Shiites, generally considered to be about 60 percent of the population, are actually about half that, and Sunni Arabs closer to 40 percent than 20 percent, as most Iraqi studies have suggested.

After a raid on the council's offices this week, he said that the council was genuine in its desire to participate in the political process, but that its commitment had been shaken.

"I think it's a scheme to wipe us out, destroy us," he said. "Their slogans about democracy are all lies."

In an interview at the council's offices, which were strewn with upended furniture and emptied filing cabinets, Mr. Qaisi was contemptuous of the Sunni Arabs appointed to seats in the Jaafari cabinet after nominees put forward by the council were rejected.

He described Sadoun al-Dulaimi, a former official in Mr. Hussein's government who resigned his post and fled the country, and who was named this week by Dr. Jaafari as defense minister, as a "double agent."

Of the top Sunni in the government, the vice president, Sheik Ghazi al-Yawar, he added, "He hasn't protected his friends or cooperated sincerely with us in the council."

Saleh Mutlak, a council member who was involved in negotiations for the cabinet posts, said in an interview that the new government would have to be "realistic" and accept that not all of the insurgents were "criminals."

He said that leaders of the military wing of Sciri, the Shiite religious party led by Mr. Hakim, appeared to have been the biggest obstacle to progress in negotiations with the new government, and that Dr. Jaafari had appeared halfhearted.

"We could not reach anything with him," he said. "He speaks in a vague way. He never comes to the point."

Steven R. Weisman reported from Washington for this article, and John F. Burns from Baghdad. Reporting was contributed by David E. Sanger and Thom Shanker from Washington, and Richard A. Oppel Jr., Sabrina Tavernise and Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedy from Baghdad.

I was trying to figure out what you were talking about....but I found this:

***************************************

Juche

Juche
Korean Name
McCune-Reischauer McCune-Reischauer is one of the two most widely used Korean language romanization systems, along with the Revised Romanization of Korean, which replaced McCune-Reischauer as the official romanization system in South Korea in 2000. A variant of McCune-Reischauer is used as the official system in North Korea. The system was created in 1937 by two Americans: George M. McCune and Edwin O. ..... Click the link for more information.	Chuch'e
Revised Romanization The Revised Romanization of Korean is the official Korean language romanization system in South Korea. The system was released by South Korean authorities in 2000 and is the South Korean official replacement for the 1984 McCune-Reischauer-based romanization system. The new system is similar to the system used before 1984, except that the old system did not faithfully represent sound changes in consonants, a prominent feature of Korean pronunciation. ..... Click the link for more information.	Juche
Hangul Hangul is the native alphabet used to write the Korean language (as opposed to the Hanja system borrowed from China). For other romanized spellings of "Hangul," please see Names below. While Hangul writing may appear ideographic to the uninitiated, it is actually phonetic. Each Hangul syllabic block consists of several of the 24 letters (jamo)—14 consonants and 10 vowels. Historically, the alphabet had 3 more consonants and 1 more vowel (See Obsolete Jamo). For a table of phonological descriptions of each letters, see Phonology. ..... Click the link for more information.	주체
Hanja Hanja (lit. Han character(s)), or Hanmun (한문; 漢文), sometimes translated as Sino-Korean characters, are what Chinese characters (Hanzi) are called in Korean, but specifically, they refer to those that the Korean language borrowed and incorporated into their own language, changing their pronunciation. Unlike the Japanese Kanji, which has altered and simplified many characters, Hanja are almost entirely identical to modern traditional Chinese Hanzi, although a minority of the standard characters of Hanja are variant Hanzi also used in standard Kanji. ..... Click the link for more information.	主體

Juche (pronounced "Joo-cheh"), also Kimilsungism, is the official government-sponsored ideology of North Korea
National motto: One is sure to win if one believes in and depends upon the people
Official language Korean
Capital P'yŏngyang
Eternal president Kim Il-sung (deceased)
Chairman, National Defence Commission Kim Jong-il¹
President, Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly Kim Yong-nam²
Premier Pak Pong-ju
Area
- Total

..... Click the link for more information. . The name is Korean

The Korean language is the most widely used language in Korea, and is the official language of both North and South Korea. The language is also spoken widely in neighbouring Yanbian, China. Worldwide, there are around 78 million Korean speakers, including large groups in the former Soviet Union, the United States, Canada, Brazil and Japan. Proper classification of Korean is not universally agreed on, but it is often considered by many to be a language isolate. Some linguists instead group it in the Altaic family of languages.
..... Click the link for more information. for "self-reliance"; in this sense autarchy An autarky is an economy that does no trade with the outside world and relies entirely on its own resources. It is also referred to as a "closed economy".

Today autarky is found very rarely. An example of a currently run autarky is North Korea, but even it has a small amount of trade between China and Japan.

In the past, fascism imposed autarky in Italy after an embargo sanctioned by
..... Click the link for more information.. Juche has developed from Stalinism

Stalinism is a term for a brand of political theory and the political and economic system implemented by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union. Leon Trotsky described the system as totalitarian and this description has become widely used by critics of Stalinism.

Stalinism as political theory

The term "Stalinism" is sometimes used to denote a brand of communist theory, dominating
..... Click the link for more information. and the teachings of Kim Il-sung; it is often confused with Stalinism proper, despite important differences.

Juche has been promoted by the North Korean government and educational system since the term was first used in a 1955

1955 is a common year starting on Saturday.

Events

January

January 2 - Panama president Jose Antonio Remon is assassinated.
January 19 - The Scrabble board game debuts.

February

February 8 - Nikolai Bulganin ousts Georgi Malenkov
February 13 - Israel obtains 4 of the 7 Dead Sea scrolls.
February 23 - First meeting of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO).

..... Click the link for more information. speech by Kim Il Sung. At first, the ideology consisted of two fundamental ideas: that the proletarian revolution belonged to the people, and that the masses must be organized by a great leader. In the 1970s Millennia: 1st millennium - 2nd millennium - 3rd millennium

Centuries: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century

Decades: 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s - 1970s - 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 2020s

Years: 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979

Events and trends

Computers, technology

Microprocessors are developed - used first in industrial applications and after that also in consumer products
Pocket calculators make the slide rule obsolete.
Home computer revolution starts
Unix created along with C programming language
Microsoft is founded (1975)

..... Click the link for more information. , Kim introduced a refined analogy: that the leader is the brain to the body of the people, and that the Korean Workers' Party The Workers Party of Korea (WPK) is the ruling party of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), commonly known as North Korea. It is also called Korean Workers' Party(KWP). WPK has held absolute power in the DPRK since 1945, and in that time has had only two leaders, Kim Il-sung (1945-1994) and his son, Kim Jong-il, (since 1994). The party is widely viewed by foreigners as Stalinist and is the closest thing to a traditional Stalinist ruling party in the world today. However, the WPK claims to have its own distinct ideology (Juche) which it considers to be a further development of "Marxism-Leninism."
..... Click the link for more information. is, in turn, the nervous system that communicates with the brain on behalf of the people.

From an economic standpoint, Juche also calls for North Korea to be self-sufficient in industry and services, with as little foreign aid or interference as possible, and it has been applied more strenuously since the 1960's. Most of the economic focus has been on heavy industry, military spending, and agriculture, which North Korea considers its basic mainstays.

Juche was first conceived at a time when the USSR The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) (Russian: Сою́з Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик (СССР); tr.: Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik (SSSR))
..... Click the link for more information. and China

Official language Chinese¹
Capital Beijing
Largest city Shanghai
President Hu Jintao
Premier Wen Jiabao
Area
- Total
- % water Ranked 4th
9,596,960 km²
2.8%
Population
- Total (2004)
- Density Ranked 1st
1,298,847,624
135/km²
Establishment
- Date Chinese Civil War

..... Click the link for more information. were vying for influence over North Korea's internal affairs; many historians view the emergence of Juche as Kim Il Sung's way of continually reasserting the state's independence. One noteworthy demonstration of this was the Juche-influenced Chollima (later known as Taean) economic campaign of the 1960s Centuries: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century

Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s - 1960s - 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s

Years: 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969

Events and trends

The 1960s was a turbulent decade of change around the world. Many of the trends of the 1960s were due to the demographic changes brought about by the baby boom generation and the dissolution of European colonial empires. (See The Sixties.)
..... Click the link for more information., where the government placed the economy under the strict control of the military in an attempt to build it up independently of Soviet support.

In 1977

For the album by Ash, see 1977 (album).

Events

January

January 1 - First woman Episcopal priest ordained.
January 6 - EMI sacks the Sex Pistols
January 18 - Scientists identify a previously unknown bacterium as the cause of the mysterious "legionnaire's disease"
January 18 - Australia experiences its worst railway disaster at Granville, near Sydney, in which 83 people died.

..... Click the link for more information. , Juche replaced Marxism in the North Korean constitution, solidifying its position in the state's government and society.

Admirers of Kim Jong Il in many countries have formed Juche Study Groups in order to promote the idea. Opponents of Juche might suggest, however, that these groups do not critically study the concept but rather exist to grasp the truth which they believe is already present therein.

Some sociologists and other overseas scholars have likened Juche to a religious movement. They have claimed that the modern ideology indicates that adherents can achieve immortal life by shaping the immortal state and that the leader, according to Juche literature, is received in the same language in which Korean Christians

For other uses of the term Christian, see Christian (disambiguation).

Christianity is an Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as described in the New Testament. Although Christians generally characterize themselves as monotheistic, the one God is most commonly, but not universally, thought to
..... Click the link for more information. would receive communion The word communion can refer to

the Eucharist, or the act of receiving the Eucharist; or
a group of churches in full communion with each other, or the relationship of full communion between Christian religious denominations; or
the Communion of Saints; or
a 1976 film; see Communion (1976 movie); or
a 1987 autobiographical book by Whitley Strieber; see Communion (book); or
a 1989 film based on Strieber's book; see Communion (1989 movie).

..... Click the link for more information. . Juche authorities state that the idea is a secular one.

External link

preview not available. Click the link for more information.

This article is copied from an article on Wikipedia.org - the free encyclopedia created and edited by online user community. The text was not checked or edited by anyone on our staff. Although the vast majority of the wikipedia encyclopedia articles provide accurate and timely information please do not assume the accuracy of any particular article. This article is distributed under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Juche

Stalinism as political theory

Events

January

February

Events and trends

Computers, technology

Events and trends

Events

January

See also

Quick Index

Contents

External link