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Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka ęape-Rivista Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Basin Ozeti

keeping troops, in eamest this time, financially re-warding poorer Muslim countries with troops to spare. While deploying such soldiers across Iraq would be a very bad idea — they would be Sunnis of course, and most unwelcome to Iraq’s Shiites — they would be fine for the recalcitrant Sunni towns.

This is no diplomatic parlor gamę. The threat of an American withdrawal would have to be madę credible by physical preparations for a military evacuation, just as reai nuclear weapons were needed for deterrence during the cold wan Morę fundamentally, it would have to be meant in eamest: the United States is only likely to obtain important concessions if it is truły willing to withdraw if they are denied. If Iraq’s neighbors are too short-sighted to start cooperating in their own best in-terests, America would indeed have to withdraw.

That is a real constraint. Then again, the situation in Iraq is not improving, the United States will assuredly leave one day in any case, and it is usually wise to

abandon failed ventures sooner rathef than later.

Yes, withdrawal would be a blow to American cred-ibility, but less so if it were deliberate and abrupt rather than a retreat under fire imposed by surging antiwar sentiments at home. (See Vietnam.)

So long as the United States is tied down in Iraq by over-ambitious policies of the past, it can only persist in wastefiil, futile aid projects and tragically futile com-bat A strategy of disengagement would require risk-taking statecraft of a high order, and much competence at the negotiating table. But it would be based on the most fundamental of realities: For geographic reasons, many other countries have morę to lose from an American debacie in Iraq than does the United States itself.

It’s time to take advantage of that difference.

Edward N. Luttwak is a senior fellow at the Center for Strategie and International Studies and the author of^uStrategy: The Logic ofWar and Peace.”

After noise and deals, Iraq gets a Parliament

Assembly to govern until January vote

By Sabrina Tavernise

BAGHDAD: A political conference has selected a National Assembly, put-ting Iraq on the road to becoming a con-stitutional democracy in a jumbled pro-cess that never included a formal vote.

The political jockeying grew intense in its finał hours on Wednesday, with some delegates climbing on a stage to protest what they said was a process monopolized by large political parties. In a finał dramatic moment, some of the delegates withdrew their candidacies in protest But they ultimately remained in the conference, giving the assembly le-gitimacy.

The result was a list of names to fili ą 100-seat assembly that will act as a parliament overseeinę the interim govem-ment of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi until elections that are scheduled for January. The body as chosen will present a cross section of Iraqi society, taking in sheiks and social workers, bu-reaucrats and religious leaders.

One delegate, Hamid al-Kifaey, said the seat distribution had ended up rela-tively proportional to the religious and ethnic demographics of this country of 25 million, including Sunni and Shiite Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen.

“Today the interim national congress has been formed,” said a tired-looking Fuad Masum, the Iraqi official who is or-ganizing the conference. “It was legaL”

While the result was hopeful, the process was messy. The conference took place in a giant, two-tiered auditor-ium inside the heavily fortified intema-tional zonę in central Baghdad It was the flrst public debate on a national scalę sińce Saddam Hussein came to power in the 1960s, and every delegate was offered the chance to talk. Repre-sentatives of minorities yelled at the

majorities. Women dressed in black cloth coverin| everything but their eyes talked into microphones. Someone read poetry. Delegates grilled moderators.

But most of the actual decision-mak-ing took place far from the cameras — in several rooms around the building, including one large one on the ground floor, delegates said. In those rooms, delegates from the major political and religious groups haggled over lists of names, trying to fulfill the assembl/s task of putting forward 81 assembly members. (The finał 19 spots had already been reserved for members of the former Goveming Council set up by the U.S. occupation.)

It was that deal-making — which included the major Shiite parties Dawa • and the Supreme Council for the Islamie Revolution in Iraq; the Sunni Islamie

Party; two Kurdish parties; the former exile group Iraqi National Congress; and Allawi’s Iraqi National Accord — that infuriated smaller parties, whose members said they had been shut out.

The names were kept under wraps until the finał, chaotic hours on Wednesday night when delegates tried to vote. “I cannot vote for names that I don’t know,” Aziz al-Yasseri, one of the pro-testers, said. “This is an unfair way, it is not a democratic way of doing things."

The deaUmaking produced strange bedfellows. Two Kurdish parties — for the most part secular with nationalist

While the result was hopeful for democracy, the process was messy.

agendas — formed a loose alliance with religious Shiite groups.

Delegates did not begin to talk about voting until Wednesday aftemoon. At one point, judges said neither of the two lists of candidates had met the 25 per-cent quota for female candidates. Some tribal leaders had refused to have women represent them, delegates said, which sent the parties back into negotiations.

The finał revolt came less than an hour before the conference concluded at 9 p.m., when a delegate from a smali party, Ismail Zayer, took the stage to say that his group had not had time to pre-pare and in protest was withdrawing the 81 names it had proposed. He ac-cused the larger groups of sending about three dozen people to infiltrate his list and then withdraw at the last minutę, so that he would not have time to redraw a proposal

“They had no shame,” he said in an exasperated voice. Still, his group did not quit the conference, and the assembly — chosen by the large parties — was legitimate, according to the four judges who presided over the confer-ence’s end. And because there was only one set of 81 names left to choose from, judges agreed that a show of hands would be enough for approval. The bal-lot boxes on the stage remained empty.

Masum, the conference organizer, said the smaller, independent parties had not been organized enough to form an effective coalition against the larger parties.

Samir Sumaitey, Iraq’s former interior minister and a delegate, put it morę succinctly. “It’s democracy in action a la Iraq," he said. “Messy.”

The New York Times

International Herald Tribune

Friday, August 20,2004

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