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The Associated Press BAGHDAD, Iraq Sept. 25 — Aquila al-Hashimi, a career diplomat, was the only member of Saddam Hussein's regime to be chosen by Iraq's American occupiers to sit on the interim Governing Council. Al-Hashimi died Thursday of gunshot wounds, five days after being ambushed by six men in a pickup truck near her home in western Baghdad. Widely expected to become Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations, she was preparing to attend the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York. Her assassination was the latest in a series of assaults against Iraqis who have worked openly with the...

Former viceroy L. Paul Bremer did 14 months of hard service in Iraq, so it is a special shame to see that he is now squandering that legacy by blaming others for what's gone wrong there.... Mr. Bremer revised his remarks: "I believe that we currently have sufficient troop levels in Iraq." ...Trouble is, we haven't found a single other senior official involved in the war or its aftermath -- in or out of uniform -- who attests to Mr. Bremer's version of events. "I never heard him ask for more troops and he had many opportunities before the President...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A U.S.-appointed Iraqi judge has issued an arrest warrant for one of the fiercest opponents of former President Saddam Hussein in connection with murder, politicians and lawyers familiar with the case said Friday. Abdul Karim al-Mohammadawi is known as "Prince of the Marshes" for leading resistance to Saddam in Iraq's southern marshlands even after the ousted dictator drained the wetlands in a campaign to crush Shi'ite rebels in the 1980s and 1990s. The warrant states that Mohammadawi, a former member of Iraq's now defunct Governing Council, is wanted in connection with the murder of a police officer...

THE thick, black smoke that drifted over the prosperous Mansour suburb of Baghdad last January had nothing to do with the bomb blasts and rocket fire that shook the Iraqi capital almost daily. In special furnaces built into an old warehouse complex near the former headquarters of the Mukhabarat intelligence service, Iraqi workers were burning money. The coalition's decision to introduce a new Iraqi currency could scarcely have been avoided. No one wanted banknotes bearing the face of Saddam Hussein. Yet the operation to exchange and destroy countless old Iraqi dinars was an invitation to fraud. The way judge Zuhair...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A senior Bush administration official Tuesday hailed the appointment of a new Iraqi government and said the Coalition Provisional Authority would remain sovereign until June 30 to help the new leadership phase in. The official, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity, also confirmed that the Iraqi Governing Council, in office since July, had voted to dissolve effective immediately to allow the new government to begin taking over its responsibilities. He also said the new Cabinet would begin negotiations on the status U.S. and other coalition forces in Iraq after June 30 "fairly soon." The official said...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi leaders are wrangling over who should succeed Saddam Hussein as president after they agreed on other key posts in the new government that will take power next month from the U.S. occupation authority. With the top post of prime minister filled and consensus on key ministries, Iraqi officials spoke on Sunday of sharp disagreement on the largely ceremonial choice of head of state between Adnan Pachachi, veteran scion of a pre-Saddam political dynasty, and Ghazi Yawar, a youthful engineer long based in Saudi Arabia. U.S. and U.N. officials may now be ready to propose a third...

U.S., U.N. Blindsided on Iraq PM Announcement 1 hour, 55 minutes ago Add World - Reuters to My Yahoo! By Caren Bohan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When word surfaced in Baghdad on Friday that Iyad Allawi would lead Iraq's interim government, confusion reigned both in Washington and at the United Nations, despite President Bush's assurances of an orderly handover. For weeks, the Bush administration has described the selection of the interim government as a process that was being spearheaded by U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi in consultation with the United States and Iraqis. Bush, in a major address on Monday, laid out...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - The Iraqi Governing Council chose a longtime anti-Saddam Hussein exile to become prime minister of Iraq's interim government, making the surprise announcement Friday despite U.N. concerns over his ties to the United States and the CIA. The selection of Iyad Allawi - a Shiite Muslim council member who headed an exile group made up of former Saddam military officers - was an assertion of influence by the U.S.-picked body. After apparent initial hesitation, the United States endorsed the choice to head the government due to take power on June 30. A senior Bush administration official in...

<p>BAGHDAD, May 17 (Reuters) - A car bomb exploded on Monday near a U.S. base in western Baghdad and there were several casualties, witnesses at the scene said.</p> <p>Cars were on fire and a large column of thick black smoke rose into the sky. U.S. troops blocked off the area.</p>

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BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - An expanded Governing Council should appoint and oversee the work of a caretaker government due to take over from the U.S.-led occupation June 30, the U.S.-picked body said Saturday. The statement by the council was the clearest sign yet of significant differences between the Iraqi administration and U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi over the best way to establish a transitional government to take power June 30 until elections the following January. Brahimi, who arrived Thursday to help set up the new government, had proposed an administration with limited powers and made up of Iraqis without ties to...

WASHINGTON — How fares the multination cover-up of the richest rip-off in world history? Obstruction of justice has never had it so good. Last month, after some badgering in this space and elsewhere, the House International Relations Committee announced it would look into the $5 billion kickback scandal in the United Nations' six-year Iraqi oil-for-food program, the largest humanitarian aid effort ever undertaken. Our State Department, eager for U.N. help in Iraq, wants no revelations of U.N. ineptitude and corruption. It waltzed the committee staff around. Senate Foreign Relations, however, not wanting to be upstaged by its House counterpart, called...

<p>WASHINGTON -- Culminating a policy reversal toward the United Nations, President Bush officially embraced a plan Friday that would give the world body a more prominent role -- perhaps even the central role -- in guiding Iraq’s postwar political transition.</p>

<p>Iraqi politicians are playing a growing role in blocking U.S. commanders from unleashing fatal force on insurgents.</p> <p>In the most glaring example, Adnan Pachachi, a Sunni member of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, insisted to American Administrator L. Paul Bremer that Marines cease their attacks on insurgents in Fallujah so he could initiate talks.</p>

Baghdad: The US-led coalition in Iraq and the Iraqi Governing Council threatened Monday to ban the Arab world's leading satellite news channels al-Jazeera and al-Arabiyeh reporters from Iraq for ratcheting up sectarian strife in this war-torn country, according to a leading government official. For almost a week, until the Marines began to take on embedded reporters, the two channels were among the handful transmitting news from the battleground town of Falluja. Their frequent use of the term "massacre" and their ongoing use of images of bloodied women and children has led US officials in Iraq to question the balance of...

Iraq Council Members in Talks with Rebel Cleric Sat Apr 10, 2004 03:34 PM ET BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Several members of the Iraqi Governing Council are negotiating with rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to end a Shi'ite uprising in the center and the south of the country, a member of the council said on Saturday. Naseer al-Chaderji declined to give details of the talks but said a deal would have to include Sadr's renunciation of violence and a commitment by the authorities to improve the lot of his mostly impoverished supporters. "They are in direct contact with Moqtada. We are already...

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Iyad Allawi, a prominent member of Iraq (news - web sites)'s interim Governing Council, has stepped down as the head of the executive body's security commission, his party's newspaper said. Baghdad daily, mouthpiece of the Iraqi National Accord, said he "renounces his mission at the head of the commission. "The commission does not have prerogatives to find effective solutions to the deterioration of the security situation" in the country, it said. The paper said Allawi had submitted a letter to the current Governing Council president, Massud Barzani, in which he expressed "reservations on the measures adopted by...

BAGHDAD, April 10 (Reuters) - A delegation from Iraq's Governing Council held talks in Falluja on Saturday to try to secure a peace deal with rebels after days of fighting that has killed hundreds of people. "The delegation, which is made up of two members of the Governing Council and also includes clerics and other notables from Baghdad, is meeting (rebels) in Falluja now," Mahmoud Othman, a member of the Governing Council, told Reuters.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A delegation from Iraq (news - web sites)'s Governing Council held talks in Falluja on Saturday to try to secure a peace deal with rebels after days of fighting that has killed hundreds of people.   "The delegation, which is made up of two members of the Governing Council and also includes clerics and other notables from Baghdad, is meeting (rebels) in Falluja now," Mahmoud Othman, a member of the Governing Council, told Reuters.

Fallujah, Iraq - A U.S. AC-130 gunship raked Iraqi insurgents Friday night after hundreds of women and children fled the besieged city Fallujah during a U.S.-declared pause in the marine offensive. On the anniversary of the fall of captive Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's regime, Baghdad and parts of central Iraq were chaotic. At a square in the capital where Saddam's statue was toppled a year ago, soldiers took down a new icon: pictures of the radical Shiite Muslim cleric whose followers have risen up against coalition forces in the south. Gunmen running rampant on Baghdad's western edge attacked a fuel...