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BAGHDAD -- The completion of the national unity government Thursday in Iraq marks the starting point for repaying Iraqis' commitment to and thirst for democracy. We are at this juncture thanks to the bravery of the soldiers, police and citizens who have paid the highest price to give Iraq its freedom. Our national unity government will honor these sacrifices by pursuing an uncompromising agenda to deliver security and services to the Iraqi people and to combat rampant corruption. This government will build on the additional momentum gained from the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in order to defeat terrorism and...

The United States has been quitley mulling the prospect that Iraq would break up into autonomous regions.The Council on Foreign Relations, which usually reflects State Department thinking, has recommended the restructuring of Iraq into six states under a single national government.Officials said the Bush Administration has been discussing options for Iraq following the withdrawal of troops in 2007, Middle East Newsline reported.Author David Phillips, a former advisor to the US government, proposed the establishment of two to three states dominated by Shiites.Another state would be comprised of mostly Sunnis and a third state would be Kurdish. Baghdad would be a...

On 16 March the Iraqi parliament met to convene its first official session as representatives of the so-called new Iraq. The new government had faced many obvious problems such as seating ministers, selecting a presidential council and, of course, agreeing on the premiership. Yet the session was plagued by a subtle yet more troubling shortcoming; namely it failed to address the status of the foreign occupation of Iraq. While the occupation remains to be the most blatant and destructive force in the country today, the national assembly had instead focused on dividing Iraq into a federal state. Three major structural...

Sunni leaders end boycott in name of liberation By Ellen Knickmeyer and Naseer Nouri in Baghdad May 23, 2005 Page Tools Email to a friend Printer format More than 1000 Sunni Arab clerics, political leaders and tribal heads have ended their two-year political boycott, to unite in a Sunni bloc to help draft Iraq's new constitution and compete in elections. Formation of the group on Saturday comes during escalating violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims that has raised the threat of sectarian war. The bloc represents moderate and hardline members of the Association of Muslim Scholars, the Iraqi Islamic Party...

... Yet, as the insurgents increasingly go after Iraqi civilians, one thing has become clear: Theirs is not, as many people maintained before the Jan. 30 elections, a struggle against American "occupation." It is a fight against a legitimate government trying to operate under the principle of self-rule -- and trying for the most part, notwithstanding terrible provocations, to include every ethnic group. As Mr. Rumsfeld said, their only strategy is butchery. That doesn't mean they are sure to lose; their barbarism can go a long way toward slowing the economic and political progress that Mr. Rumsfeld said is necessary....

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...

SATURDAY, MAY 14, 2005 12:00 AM Democracy under attack in Iraq The Iraqi people won the first round of the battle for democracy when they defied terrorist death threats and cast their votes to elect a new parliament. Now they must win the second round by opposing the foreign jihadists and recalcitrant Sunnis who have set out to destabilize the new government by launching a new wave of terrorist violence that has claimed more than 400 lives and wounded thousands in the weeks since the formation of the new Cabinet was announced. As in the first terrorist campaign aimed at...

The first democratically elected Iraqi government was not even fully born when already its obituaries were being written. The front page of the New York Times last week reported of a "striking display of divisions," of "polarizing negotiations" and the "serious embarrassment" that the difficulties in finding suitable Sunni Arab cabinet ministers was causing. The implication of such reports is that without "credible" Sunnis in the cabinet, the government's legitimacy will be impaired, its efforts to defeat the current terrorist onslaught will be hobbled, or both. Before we get too breathless, some perspective is in order. First, Sunni Arabs now...

The Iraqi prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, has said little in public during the marathon process of filling his cabinet with a cast of ministers acceptable to most of Iraq’s political factions. His low-key approach has finally yielded results, with the May 7th announcement that the remaining disputed posts, including oil and defence, had been filled. However, the long delay in forming a government has dissipated much of the optimism generated by the end-January election, while the insurgency rages on unabated and the task of rebuilding the Iraqi economy becomes ever more daunting. Mr Jaafari managed in the end to secure...

ASSOCIATED PRESS BAGHDAD -- Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari pledged to unite Iraq's rival ethnic and religious factions and fight terrorism as the nation's first democratically elected government was sworn in yesterday. "You all know the heavy legacy inherited by this government. We are afflicted by corruption, lack of services, unemployment and mass graves," Mr. al-Jaafari told lawmakers after taking the oath of office before the National Assembly. "I would like to tell the widows and orphans ... your sacrifices have not gone in vain."

Few Iraqis have heard of the "resource curse," the scholarly term for the economic and political miseries of countries with abundant natural resources. But in Tayeran Square, where hundreds of unemployed men sit on the sidewalk each morning hoping for a day's work, they know how the curse works. "Our country's oil should have made us rich, but Saddam spent it all on his wars and his palaces," said Sattar Abdula, who has not had a steady job in years. He proposed a simple solution instantly endorsed by the other men on the sidewalk: "Divide the money equally. Give each...

Recently the BBC decided to conduct an informal survey around Iraq: "Two years after the statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled in Baghdad, marking the fall of the city to US-led forces, BBC Arabic.com asked seven Iraqis for their thoughts on how life has changed for them since the conflict." The results were surprising--at least for the BBC, whose attitude toward the liberation of Iraq has always been lukewarm at best. They were surprising for me too, not so much in what the seven Iraqis had to say, but that the BBC chose to run the story. Here's Saad, 32,...

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - In the end it was the demands of hard politics that kept most minority Sunnis out of Iraq's new government. And that could spur an escalation in the country's bloody insurgency. Despite U.S. pressure and their own recognition that it was a priority, Iraqi politicians failed to name a significant number of Sunni Arabs to the Cabinet. Those who were selected are not major figures in the Sunni community and none received high-profile portfolios. The promise to reach out to the Sunnis foundered on political realities: rivalries within the Shiite party that dominates the government, that...

BAGHDAD, Iraq — After nearly three months of political wrangling, Iraq's interim National Assembly approved a partial Cabinet Thursday, ushering in the country's first elected government since the fall of Saddam Hussein and raising hopes for an end to the insurgency.

Iraq formed its first democratically elected government in more than 50 years on Thursday, ending three months of political stalemate that has crippled efforts to tackle violence. But Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari failed to name permanent ministers to five key portfolios, including oil and defense, and a top Sunni Muslim official criticized the new government as sectarian. The 275-seat parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor of the cabinet proposed by Jaafari, ending a power vacuum that had dissipated the optimism created by the Jan. 30 elections. The government's formation coincided with the 68th birthday of former dictator Saddam Hussein, who is...

Sunni Muslim politicians dropped their demand Monday to include former members of Saddam Hussein's party in Iraq's new Cabinet in a bid to get more ministries. Iraq's Sunni minority is believed to be the backbone of the insurgency and many here blame the months-long impasse in forming a new government for a resurgence in violence. As leaders of Iraq's main Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish factors continued their backroom wheeling and dealing, Prime Minister-designate Ibrahim al-Jaafari again put off his long-promised Cabinet announcement. The National Dialogue Council, a coalition of 10 different Sunni factions, initially requested 16 Cabinet seats. It submitted...

The Bush administration has hailed the formation of a new Iraqi government as a major step toward bringing stability to the country. But behind the scenes, some U.S. officials are fretting about Iraqi plans to remove as many as 9,000 members of the country's security, intelligence and police services who have been identified as former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath regime. Such a move could wreck the Iraqi forces that the U.S. has spent two years and $5 billion trying to train, according to U.S. officials in Baghdad and Washington. They are also worried that a sweeping de-Baathification order could...

Through their democratically elected representatives, the people of Iraq have entrusted me with the office of the presidency. After 50 years of political struggle against discrimination and dictatorship, this is a grand honor and a humbling moment. As we look ahead to a new Iraq based on tolerance and equality, federalism and unity, democracy and freedom, we remember those whose sacrifice made this possible -- Iraqis, Americans, Britons, Poles, Italians, Czechs and so many others from around the world. 'snip' The choice of peace or war lies not with the Iraqis who ignored terrorism and intimidation to vote in their...

Saddam Hussein could avoid the gallows under a secret proposal by insurgent leaders that Iraq's new administration is "seriously considering", a senior government source said yesterday. A reprieve is understood to be among the central demands of Sunni nationalists and former members of Saddam's Ba'ath party who have reportedly begun negotiations with the government amid the backdrop of a bloody insurgency which claimed 30 lives during the weekend. Officials say they are looking for a way of joining the political process after January's election, which was boycotted by most of the once-powerful Sunni minority. "We are trying to reach out...

Baghdad-Al-Shark Al-Awsat: Khasru al-Jaf, member of the Iraqi National Assembly from the Kurdish National Coalition slate, said that the current Iraqi flag should changed because under this flag, thousands were killed and many became homeless and that the Iraqi flag has been replaced five rimes in the past, including three times during the republican era. Al-jaf clarified that the Iraqi flag has been under fraud and is a very sensitive issue. Also, the sacred word was not there before, and the one who placed it is known. It should be deep inside us and in conscience. This should be decided...