Iraq's new govt must abide by American-made laws.

[mom cat]

Iraq's incoming government must abide by American-made laws
By Jim Krane, Associated Press, 6/27/2004 15:17


BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) The U.S. led-coalition, facing a Wednesday deadline to hand back power, has put in place major legal revisions that would force Iraqis to get drivers' licenses, obey traffic laws, ban certain people from holding office and place American contractors above the law.

Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish politician and member of the disbanded U.S.-picked Governing Council, said he thinks the Americans began pushing the flurry of laws once it became clear the occupation would be cut short. Washington's earlier plans, he said, called for a longer occupation that would have allowed Iraq's constitution to be written under U.S. watch.

Proponents say the sheaf of edicts signed by occupation chief L. Paul Bremer are the best way to ensure one of the top U.S. goals in invading Iraq: to leave behind a functioning democracy with a base of liberal institutions such as an independent judiciary, civil society and free market economy.

But critics say the Coalition Provisional Authority's flurry of laws amounts to meddling in Iraq's basic institutions, something that international law places out of bounds for an occupying power.

Especially irksome for Iraqi leaders is the fact that the occupier's edicts remain in force after the occupation ends including laws that curtail the powers of the incoming government.

EDITED BY ADMIN: COPYRIGHT

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/179/world/Iraq_s_incoming_government_mus:.shtml

On the Net:

CPA laws: http://www.iraqcoalition.org/regulations

[struggle4progress]

1. This is a really important story.

Of course, if Iraq were truly independent, the CPA's laws could be overturned immediately. And there's the strange matter of the US deciding, before Iraq became "self-governing," to build the largest US "embassy" in the world there and to appoint (and confirm) a US ambassador (without an invitation from the "independent" country).

[D-Notice]

2. Well

We've had torture-lite, now here's new & improved sovereignty-lite!

There was I thinking that you were either sovereign or not...

Could this be classed as the "Third Way"? ;-)

[Djinn]

4. LOL

Third Way sovereignty - endorsed by Tory Blair himself as well!

[Moderator]

3. soulsick in jp

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