Friday, July 11, 2003

IRAQI INTERIM GOVERNMENT TO START UP THIS WEEKEND!

Huge symbolic step here.
Representatives of the major political, ethnic and religious groups of Iraq — some of them skilled politicians, some of them exile leaders coming home and others political neophytes united by their suffering under Saddam Hussein — will declare the first postwar interim government in Iraq this weekend, Western and Iraqi officials said tonight.

In an interview tonight, L. Paul Bremer III, the top American administrator in Iraq, said that in the course of negotiations over the new governing structure, he had made a number of "tactical adjustments" to meet the demands of the Iraqis. One of those adjustments, Iraqi political figures said, was to grant assurances that the majority of the council's members would be Shiites.

Mr. Bremer said the governing council would appoint and supervise a council of ministers that would run the government, send diplomats abroad to represent Iraq, establish a new currency, set fiscal and budget policy and, perhaps, take a prominent role in national security even as the country remains garrisoned by American and British troops.

"If they appoint a minister and he doesn't perform, they can fire him," Mr. Bremer said. "That's pretty executive."

And a step forward for a country that once upon a time truly put the "execute" in the term "executive".

Read it all here.

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