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New leaders protested no occupation { April 16 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33093-2003Apr15.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33093-2003Apr15.html
Iraqi Leaders Gather Under U.S. Tent
Government Planning Meeting Is Denounced as Unrepresentative by Uninvited
By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, April 16, 2003; Page A01
UR, Iraq, April 15 -- Protected by barbed wire and armed Marines, about 100 U.S.-chosen Iraqi community leaders and exile activists gathered today under a tent at an abandoned military air base to take the first step in planning a new government for Iraq. Outside the air base, near the biblical birthplace of Abraham, dozens of uninvited political figures denounced the gathering as illegitimate and unrepresentative of long-established Iraqi groups that had opposed the rule of Saddam Hussein.
Thousands of Iraqi Shiites shouting "No to occupation!" staged a noisy protest against the U.S.-sponsored talks in the nearby town of Nasiriyah. They said they were upset because key Shiite groups and their leaders were not in on the U.S.-sponsored meeting at Ur.
Zalmay Khalilzad, President Bush's special envoy, sought to assure delegates inside the air-conditioned tent that the United States had no intention of turning the current military occupation of Iraq into a long-term tutelage. "We have no intention of ruling Iraq," he said, adding, "We want you to establish your own democratic system based on Iraqi traditions and values."
Retired Lt. Gen. Jay M. Garner, whose Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance has been assigned to put an interim Iraqi government into place, cited the birthplace of Abraham as a favorable setting for the work ahead in reassembling this broken nation. After the introductory remarks, relayed in a pool report, the selected Iraqi representatives rose to voice their views about what should be done.
The group, which included a Kurdish official who asked about the U.N. role and a local Shiite cleric who urged separation of church and state, discussed such priorities as repairing damaged hospitals, prosecuting Hussein lieutenants and writing a constitution -- and agreed to gather again in 10 days.
A statement issued in the name of the delegates proposed 13 principles for a future Iraqi government, including federalism, democracy, nonviolence and respect for diversity, including a role for women.
But the meeting, at the Tallil air base, was upstaged for those outside by the arrival in Nasiriyah of Sheik Mohammed Bakr Nasri, 71, a leader of the long-outlawed Dawa Party, a shadowy Shiite organization dedicated to forming an Islamic republic in Iraq. Nasri, who returned to Iraq on Monday after fleeing a death sentence in 1979, was greeted with raucous cheers, poems and some tears by a crowd of more than 2,000 of his followers as he delivered a fiery political speech calling on U.S. troops to quickly make way for an Iraqi government.
"We don't need years of a transition period," the white-bearded, white-turbaned Nasri shouted into the microphone to a crowd jammed into the Al Bait mosque in Nasiriyah. "We need within one or two months a committee of people from inside the country to control the political situation."
Nasri, considered to be Dawa's philosophical guide, challenged the U.S. forces in an interview, saying: "The most dangerous thing is to prolong the occupation period of the coalition forces. We hope the period will be shorter than six months, and not longer than six months."
He criticized the U.S.-sponsored talks at the air base, saying Americans "announced that all the opposition parties could attend the conference, but only those supported by them attended." He said in predominantly Shiite southern Iraq, "people don't trust the Americans because they have an experience with them in 1991."
He was referring to the Shiite rebellion that year, in the wake of the Persian Gulf War, that was encouraged by the United States and then crushed by Hussein's forces as nearby U.S. troops stood aside.
Nasri's challenge was just one of many confronting the United States as it tries to assemble a new Iraqi administration after three decades of repressive, one-party rule by Hussein and his now-deposed Baath Party. Long pent-up demands for a voice are being heard across the political spectrum -- from former Communists purged by Hussein to conservative religious clerics to tribal leaders to separatist-minded Kurds in the north.
Perhaps no group poses a greater challenge to U.S. aims than the Shiites, who make up about 60 percent of Iraq's 24 million people. Long sidelined by the secular Baath Party, whose leadership was Sunni Muslim, many of Iraq's often conservative Shiite clergy seem eager to exercise political influence now that Hussein is gone.
As Iraq begins trying to find its political future, further splits appear to be developing between those who remained inside the country for the past 30 years -- and who say they suffered the most under Hussein's rule -- and the Iraqi exile leaders returning from abroad, many of whom are viewed with suspicion by the internal opposition.
Many of those factions converged outside the entrance to the Tallil air base. Without official invitations, they engaged in an impromptu, disorganized and noisy version of street democracy outside as U.S. Marines and military police kept a close watch.
"I came here at 8 in the morning, and nobody will let me in," said Mohammed Yasser, 49, a member of the outlawed Communist Party for the past 27 years. Criticizing the U.S.-sponsored meeting, he said, "It can't represent the political and social parties and movements inside the country, and I can prove it because nobody from the inside opposition is attending this conference."
"Just imagine that," he said, pointing to the base. "An American flag, and American forces, and they say this is the opposition of Iraq. You can judge the picture yourself. . . . The people in Iraq know very well the Communist Party, which is not like the other parties supported from the outside. Or the new parties that no one knows anything about."
Representing the small Al-Najin tribe at the conference -- but not allowed in -- was Sheik Mehdi Abdulhussein.
"We came here to attend, but they won't allow us to attend," the black-robed tribal leader said. In comments directed at those inside, he said: "All of them are agents of the Americans. All of them are working for the American interest. They have to hear our voice. I refuse such treatment! All the Iraqi people will resist such a government that is formed under the American umbrella!"
Much of the anger was focused on Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, an exile group backed by the United States. Chalabi has come to be seen as the Bush administration's favorite political figure because he was ferried here in a U.S. military helicopter. Chalabi did not attend the meeting but sent a lower-level representative. He has been reported to be on the way to Baghdad.
Asked whether Chalabi could be a future leader, Nasri replied, "No -- absolutely not."
One Iraqi man who came to see if he could sit in on the session, Saladdin Mekki, an electrician, said: "I think we need a liberal government that can join all these opposition movements together. We have Sunni, we have Shiite, we have Kurds. We need a liberal government to collect all these parts. And especially the Shiite imams -- we don't want these to be the only ones in government in Iraq, like in Iran."
But the Shiite clerics, long suppressed under Hussein's rule and representing a majority of Iraq's population, demand a major role in forming the first post-Hussein government. And many have indicated their intention to oppose any government they see as too closely aligned with the United States.
Outside the gates, and also uninvited, were representatives of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, an Iranian-based exile group headed by Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Hakim. One of the group's members denounced today's meeting as "rubbish."
"Iraq needs an Iraqi interim government," said the official, Abdul Aziz Hakim. "Anything other than this tramples on the rights of the Iraqi people and would be a return to the era of colonization."
Also vying for influence are the followers of Iraq's leading Shiite scholar, Ali Sistani, who is based in the holy city of Najaf 125 miles northwest of here, and those who proclaim allegiance to the slain Islamic cleric Mohammed Baqr Sadr, who was killed after a 1980 assassination attempt against now-deposed deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz. In an interview in Basra, Aeyed Maihi, a representative of the Sadr faction, also expressed misgivings about the U.S. role in the future Iraq.
"The people here in this city are very doubtful of the Americans, and they are suspicious," he said.
The United States described the conference here as just the beginning stage of what will likely be a long process. "This is only the fledgling first meeting of what will hopefully be a much longer series of meetings across Iraq," said a U.S. Central Command spokesman, Jim Wilkinson.
Outside the gates of Tallil air base, a U.S. Air Force spokesman, Maj. Jon Anderson, said, "We're happy and proud to be at the start of a free and democratic Iraq."
Anderson called the meeting "cordial and very relaxed" and described it as "more of a get-to-know-you kind of meeting." The session started just before 3 p.m. and lasted less than four hours.
Asked whether the heavy security keeping Iraqis outside was sending the wrong message, Anderson replied: "I can't believe you asked that question. . . . We're in a combat zone. This city has just been liberated. We're trying to make it safer. We're trying to make it conducive to democracy."
Correspondent Alan Sipress in Doha, Qatar, contributed to this report.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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