PM Allawi strikes note of alarm as new Iraqi government sworn in

[seemslikeadream]

Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi delivers a speech during the swearing-in ceremony in Baghdad



"I call on all the heroes of the past ... all the sons of Iraq to make every effort to eradicate the foreign terrorists who are killing our people and destroying our country," Allawi said at the ceremony following the official handover of sovereignty by the US-led coalition occupying Iraq.




"Before us there is a challenge and a burden and we ask God almighty to give us patience," Yawar told the ceremony on the stage, bedecked with Iraqi flags.

Quoting from the Koran, he also called for Iraq to work "in the spirit of a family protecting our country and take away our old wounds and overcome our
grievances".



While Yawar, dressed in tribal robes, promised reconciliation, a grim Allawi sketched the tough road ahead to his people, aware insurgents were trying to discredit his government set to skipper Iraq until January elections.

Allawi warned members of Saddam's former Baath party to shun the insurgency.


Allawi, himself a former Baathist, advocated expanding the army after the US-led coalition disbanded the old 400,000 strong military last year and fuelled the discontent of Sunni Muslims associated with the old regime.


"In adidition to that our production of oil is regressing ...because of the terrorists and their targeting of power and oil facilities," Allawi said. "So it will take time, maybe a year or two, before we build a strong and healthy economy."

He also paid tribute to the country's religious leaders and publicly saluted the spiritual leader of Iraq's Shiite majority, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who opposed the US-led coalition's delays on holding elections. - AFP

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http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/92611/1/.html

Published on Sunday, June 27, 2004 by The Sunday Herald (Scotland)
June 30th: Bogus End To A Bogus War
Terror Warnings: The Allies will hand over sovereignty to Iraq this week, but resistance leaders have vowed to unleash yet more violence

by Neil Mackay

JUST seconds before he decapitated the US hostage Nick Berg, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi addressed these words to "the mothers and wives of American soldiers": "You will see nothing from us except corpse after corpse and casket after casket of those slaughtered in this fashion."

Zarqawi and his two lieutenants, who filmed the whole gruesome execution, then fell on Berg, literally sawing off his head. The video was made for one purpose: propaganda. And the message was quite clear: the Americans, their allies or those Iraqis who "collaborated" with the occupying forces were all targets and they would die in the most dreadful fashion possible.

This month, Zarqawi - an al-Qaeda affiliate and the most prominent Islamic fundamentalist terrorist in Iraq - and other disparate groups including Saddam loyalists and the Shia followers of the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr have made many more Bergs.

On Thursday, more than 100 people were killed in rebel attacks in five cities. On June 17, 41 died in a car bombing. June 16 saw the killing of the security chief of the Iraqi oil fields in Kirkuk. On June 14, 12 died in a car bombing in Baghdad. On June 12 and 13 two assassinations claimed the lives of an education ministry official and the interim deputy foreign minister. And on June 8, 15 died in car bombings in Mosul and Baquba. These are by no means all the killings - just selected atrocities in the daily horror of life in occupied Iraq.

Such overwhelming violence has made the official handover of sovereignty from the occupying powers to Iraq on Wednesday a paper exercise . In theory, Iraq will regain its sovereignty, but in practice nothing will have changed. Zarqawi and his followers will still be killing Iraqi "fifth columnists" and foreign troops, US and British soldiers will still be controlling the day-to-day lives of ordinary people.
more
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0627-02.htm

[mike_c]

1. quisling....

He depends upon the U.S. to keep him alive. Kind of reminds me of the Soviet experiment with Afghan socialism....

[thebigidea]

2. Hmmm... I guess the focus groups didn't like their new flag, huh?

[seemslikeadream]

3. Iraqi PM Prepares to Face Down Guerrillas

I just liked the title

Posted on Mon, Jun. 28, 2004
JIM KRANE

Associated Press

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Bomb-building Islamic radicals have joined forces with guerrilla foot soldiers from Saddam Hussein's ousted regime in a bloody insurgency that now has a new target: Iraq's fragile day-old government.

Officials have been warning that insurgents were planning a bloody offensive and a spate of car bombs to disrupt the day that the interim government is installed.

more
http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/9034452.htm

[seemslikeadream]

4. An inside look at the first few hours

By HANNAH ALLAM

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Within five hours of returning sovereignty to a new interim Iraq regime, the only Americans left in the marble-floored nerve center of Iraq's new government on Monday were the private security guards standing outside Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's office - and one U.S. reporter.


The rest had gone, bidding their Iraqi counterparts goodbye and good luck in the building whose hallways until now had been crowded with American advisers to the now-disbanded Iraqi Governing Council.


In one way, the sudden handover of power, two days ahead of schedule, was symbolic - the Iraqis were called on to react to the American timetable. Few, if any, had been warned of what was about to happen, and the building, once a guesthouse at Saddam Hussein's palace, had an air of chaos as aides scrambled to make deadlines they found out about only when they woke that morning.


But by the end of the day, it was clear that whatever the coming days would show in the rest of Iraq, that Iraqis were in charge of the government center.


President Ghazi al-Yawar, in his trademark flowing robes and Arab headdress, strode through the building with a regal air unseen in 15 months of American occupation.

more
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/9033955.htm

[Veggie Meathead]

5. Allawi would be well advised to watch his back where the

anointed quisling Chalabi awaits.When, not if, Allawi is assassinated,Chalabi steps up to be crowned as the new Shah of Iraq with his patron Wolfowitz's blessing.

" Yonder Cassius has a mean and hungry look"-- Julius Caesar.

[seemslikeadream]

6. Al-Zarqawi Says Iraq’s PM Allawi Marked For Assassination

Al-Zarqawi Says Iraq’s PM Allawi Marked For Assassination


Today’s car-bombers ought to think over a lesson their new Prime Minister learned the hard way: You can’t just take over a country by blowing up random humans. You’ve got to work hard your whole life, and maybe, someday, if you play your cards right and take just enough money from just the right people, you can take over the job of pretending to rule a country full of people that want to kill you.



It seems that being the first Prime Minister of Iraq’s new Democratic Era could be a tough job. On the one hand, there’s the 160,000 heavily armed foreign soldiers in the country who won’t be leaving until things calm down and someone starts to make some serious money out of this whole disaster. On the other, twenty-five million people live in the country, and at best they think that Iyad Allawi is a corrupt puppet (Marketplace quoted wealthy businessmen who nominated him ‘most likely to sell his influence for money.’) At the less favorable end, they are holding rocket launchers and AK-47s and are actively working to throw the foreign fighters and the new PM’s entire entourage (popularly known as ‘the imported government’) out.

In reality though, Allawi’s main jobs will be to keep himself alive, follow orders, and be a good spokesperson. Iraq will be controlled as much as is possible by Americans, partly by the military who will continue with their brutal occupation, and now also from the largest US Embassy in the world.

Hours after Paul Bremer fled Baghdad, his true successor arrived. John Negroponte is the perfect man for the job. His last post was ambassador to the UN, where he smoothly yet unsuccessfully tried to sell the Iraq war. But his best experience for the position was earned as ambassador to Honduras, at that time under a military dictatorship, where he was alleged to be a central figure in the support of the Contras in Nicaragua and of ‘Battalion 316’, the CIA-trained military intelligence group that carried out torture, kidnappings and murders in Honduras.

more
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=04/06/28/1703792

[seemslikeadream]

7. Showtime in Iraq

The story line for the unexpected U.S. transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis on Monday unfolded less like the plot of a razzmatazz Hollywood blockbuster than of a rich-with-meaning independent film.
The stealth event — a far cry from the pomp and ceremony planned for Wednesday — underscored the myriad vulnerabilities the new government and its U.S. protectors face. When is the symbolic birth of a new nation hidden rather than celebrated?

But it, nevertheless, was the best way for new Prime Minister Iyad Allawi to secure a honeymoon. Insurgents were prevented from upstaging the handover of power and undercutting Allawi's authority from the get-go. His message, not theirs, set the tone for the battle for legitimacy, which is the key to determining which direction Iraq heads.

It provided, too, a moment for the world to pause. No matter whether you agree or disagree with the Iraq war, the fact that an Iraqi leader and his government are now in charge represents a new starting point after decades of brutalizing dictatorship. "This is a historic day, a happy day, a day that all Iraqis have been looking forward to," Allawi said.

What the new starting point leads to is, of course, far from certain. The most realistic U.S. hope is for a system to emerge that is stable enough to prevent the country from descending into civil war and becoming a terrorist haven. That almost certainly means accepting something partly Islamic in character and well short of Western democracy

more
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2004-06-28-edtwo_x.htm