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Iraqi Governing Council Statement on Results of April 12 Meeting 4/13/2004 2:28:00 PM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: International Desk Contact: Iraq Interests Section, 202-483-7500 or Iraqia.Washington@netzero.com WASHINGTON, April 13 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The following was released today by the Iraq Interests Section: Iraqi Governing Council Press Release No. 156 Baghdad, Iraq Monday, April 12 Pursuing the efforts of the IGC in support of national unity, and to preserve the lives of innocent citizens who are dying daily as a result of the crimes and plots of terrorists, outlaws and the remnants of the old regime, and seeking to resolve the current...

IRAQ'S Governing Council demanded an immediate ceasefire across the country and a halt to "collective punishment" today in a sign of a split between US-picked Iraqi leaders and American administrators over US military operations. Abdel Karim Mahud al-Mahamadawi, a secular Shi'ite member of Iraq's interim Governing Council, met with radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose militia is battling US-led forces in the south. He said he was suspending his membership in the Iraqi Governing Council until the "bleeding in all Iraq" ends. Another member, Ghazi al-Yawer, threatened to quit the council over the Marines' bloody siege of the city of...

For an Arab world resistant to political reform, the new Iraq taking shape under U.S. tutelage is a troubling harbinger. In the five months since U.S. forces rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein's rule, the country's ethnically and religiously diverse people have, in one giant leap, overturned decades of social and political injustice, replaced a brutal one-party system with a multitude of groups advocating a rich range of ideologies and created a free press. Shiite Muslims, a majority in Iraq oppressed for decades by a Sunni minority favored by past colonial masters and later by Saddam, are now free to worship...