BAGHDAD, July 12 -- Iraqi leaders and the U.S.-led occupation authority agreed today to give a slight majority of seats on a 25-member governing council to people who had lived outside the limits of ousted president Saddam Hussein's government, Iraqis involved in the process said.
The makeup of the council, which will have broad executive powers during the postwar occupation, is a significant victory for political groups that had opposed Hussein's government from exile. But it is a reversal for the authority, whose leaders had planned to give Iraqis who lived under Hussein a majority on the council. U.S. and British officials here have been concerned that granting former exiles and ethnic Kurds a majority could weaken support for the council among the many Iraqis who view the former exiles with suspicion.
U.S. troops monitor a local Iraqi election on the same day that details were announced for 25-member council for the national government.
(Stan Honda -- AFP)
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Although top U.S. and British officials here had initially sought to keep former exiles and Kurds in the minority, the U.S. civil administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, and other senior officials agreed to revise their formula after lobbying by political leaders who had been in exile. The Iraqi leaders argued that placing more people with political skills on the council, even if they had lived outside the country, would give the group the best chance of success.
For the occupation authority, that outcome has become increasingly important. Instead of limiting the council to an advisory body, Bremer and other top U.S. and British officials here now believe that forming a council that has broad responsibility for day-to-day governance could help to channel some of the anger away from the U.S. occupation authority over the slow resumption of basic services.
The change was driven by intense pressure from several political groups that had been in exile, particularly the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which demanded that some people tapped by the authority to join the governing council be stricken from the list, Iraqi political leaders said. A representative of the Supreme Council, the largest political party representing Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority, asserted that one of the people advocated by the occupation authority, a liberal Shiite cleric from the town of Hilla, had links to Hussein's intelligence service, the leaders said.
After tense negotiations, U.S. and British officials acceded to demands from the Supreme Council and other parties that some of the names be changed out of concern that the Supreme Council would pull out, people involved in the process said.
At least two replacements for those who were removed are Iraqis who did not live under Hussein's government in recent years: Hamid Majid Musa, the leader of the Iraqi Communist Party, who lived in autonomous Kurdish-controlled Iraq, and Samir Mahmoud Shaker, a businessman from the city of Ramadi, who participated in a conference of exiles before the war.
"They drove a very hard bargain," a diplomat familiar with the selection process said of the Supreme Council.
Representatives of the occupation authority could not be reached for comment.
The council will be comprised of 13 Shiites, five Sunni Muslims, five Kurds, one Turkman and one Assyrian Christian, Iraqi political leaders said. Three members will be women, they said.
The body will include leaders of the country's seven main political groups, all of whom had lived outside Iraq or in Kurdish-controlled areas in northern Iraq. They are Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress, Massoud Barzani of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Ayad Allawi of the Iraqi National Accord, Abdul Aziz Hakim of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Ibrahim Jafari of the Dawa party and Nasir Chaderchi of the National Democratic Party.
Hoshyar Zebari, a senior official in the Kurdistan Democratic Party, said representatives of the seven groups urged Bremer and his top political aide, Ryan Crocker, a State Department official, to add people with political experience. Because Hussein did not allow any political organization other than his ruling Baath Party, most of those with meaningful political experience have spent at least some time in exile.
"If we're going to assume real responsibility, there is a need for the governing council to have a strong political element to it," Zebari said. He said Iraqi political leaders expressed "some disappointment at the quality of the internal leaders."
A spokesman for the Iraqi National Congress, an umbrella organization of exile groups that advocated a strong role for returning Iraqis, said the council's membership was "very positive."
The council has scheduled a meeting for Sunday morning and a news conference after.
In a private meeting today, Bremer and the leaders of seven large political organizations agreed on the language of an executive order he will issue authorizing the council's formation and outlining its powers and responsibilities, attendees of the meeting said.
Bremer has promised that the council would have the power to approve next year's budget, select and dismiss government ministers, appoint diplomats and set up a "preparatory commission" to decide how the country's new constitution should be written, participants in the meeting said. In today's document, Bremer stated that the council would have the right to prepare policies on matters concerning Iraq's national security, its armed forces and the justice sector.
Also today, attackers in a passing pickup truck threw a homemade bomb at U.S. soldiers guarding a hospital in downtown Baghdad, slightly injuring one of them, the Associated Press reported.
