Global Policy Forum

By Jane Perlez

American-sponsored talks on the future of Iraq, bringing together often-quarrelsome Iraqi factions, opened Tuesday with a U.S. pledge not to rule Iraq and ended with an agreement to meet again in 10 days. Thousands of Shiite Muslims whose representatives boycotted the meeting near Ur, the ancient Mesopotamian city, demonstrated in nearby An Nasiriyah against the gathering, held at the Tallil Air Base. Many of those who did not attend said they opposed U.S. plans to install the retired Lieutenant General Jay Garner to run an interim administration in Iraq. Garner, wearing an Iraqi flag pin on his blue shirt, opened the conference by saying, "A free and democratic Iraq will begin today." He added, "What better place than the birthplace of civilization could you have for the beginning of a free Iraq?"

A White House envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, told delegates that the United States had "no interest, absolutely no interest, in ruling Iraq." Participants included Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites from inside the country and others who have spent years in exile. American officials invited the groups, but each picked their own representatives. "It's critical that the world understand that this is only the fledgling first meeting of what will hopefully be a much larger series of meetings across Iraq," said Jim Wilkinson, a spokesman at U.S. Central Command, in Doha, Qatar. The British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, also sought to dampen expectations about the meeting. "It is not a one-off, it's the beginning of a process to restore governance," he said in Qatar. The American-led interim administration could begin handing power back to Iraqi officials within three to six months, but forming a government will take longer, said Major General Tim Cross, the top British member of Garner's team. In addition to Khalilzad and Garner, representatives from Britain, Australia and Poland attended the meeting on Tuesday. Garner flew to Iraq from Kuwait on Monday to begin a process he himself predicted would be messy and contentious.

Little in common for leaders

The religious and political leaders, who met at a makeshift U.S. air base beside the ancient Mesopotamian city of Ur in southern Iraq, agreed to meet again in 10 days, according to a statement published on the Web site of the U.S. Central Command, Reuters reported. The 13-point statement, which was approved by consensus according to one group that attended, advocated a federal democracy and the dissolution of Saddam Hussein's once-feared Ba'ath Party. But the meeting, which spurred protests in the nearby town of An Nasiriyah by crowds denouncing any form of American rule, raised as many questions as answers in a country split along ethnic, religious and political lines.

Jay Garner, the retired U.S. general leading the effort to rebuild Iraq, opened the conference, which was held in a big white marquee pitched next to a stepped ziggurat temple. Garner will be in charge of an interim administration that Washington hopes will be set up in about two weeks and will remain in force until an Iraqi government takes over. "We want you to establish your own democratic system based on Iraqi traditions and values," President George W. Bush's special envoy on the region, Zalmay Khalilzad, said. "I urge you to take this opportunity to co-operate with each other." But events surrounding the meeting, which was boycotted by a major Iran-based Shiite Muslim group, served notice that ruling postwar Iraq will not be easy. "We cannot be part of a process which is under an American general," a spokesman for the Iran-based Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq said, explaining its boycott. Ahmad Chalabi, an Iraqi businessman favored by the Pentagon for a role in Iraq, did not attend in person, although he had talks with Garner on the eve of the meeting.

The start of the meeting was delayed for unexplained reasons, and thousands of Iraqis protested in An Nasiriyah, saying they wanted to rule themselves and making clear they opposed rule by the United States as much as by Saddam. "No to America, No to Saddam," they chanted. About 80 Iraqis, from radical and mainstream Shiite and Sunni Muslim, Kurdish and monarchist groups, attended the talks near Ur, 375 kilometers (235 miles) south of Baghdad. The 13-point statement rejected political violence, meted out by Saddam to silence opponents or potential rivals. It said Iraqis must choose their own leaders and not have them imposed from outside. Little else was agreed except that the delegates should reconvene in 10 days at a location that is yet to be decided. A spokesman for Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress said the meeting "was low-level and never intended to produce concrete results." Sheikh Ayad Jamal Al Din, a Shiite religious leader from nearby An Nasiriyah, touched on a sensitive issue by proposing a separation of religion and state. "We reject the concept of a confessional democracy that would prevent the Iraqi people practising religion," he said.

Nassar Hussein Musawi, a secondary school teacher, said he and his wife had been persecuted by Saddam. He told the meeting: "Those who would like to separate religion from the state are simply dreaming." Garner's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance says it wants to hand over to an Iraqi government after a matter of months. The challenge is huge.

Iraq is an ethnically and religiously divided land that over the past century has known mainly monarchy, military dictatorship and one-party Ba'athist rule. But the stakes are high. Iraq, devastated by wars and sanctions and strategically located between the Arab world, Iran and Turkey, has the world's second-largest proven oil reserves. Western firms are looking hungrily at reconstruction contracts. The Iraqi factions were flown to Tuesday's meeting and met, several hours behind schedule.

The talks took place with the United States insisting that the looting and lawlessness that marked the first days after Saddam's overthrow on Wednesday were subsiding. In Baghdad, although electricity was still out, a row of barber-shops lifted their shutters, red double-decker buses started plying routes that were virtually empty a few days ago and several street-side cafes filled up with customers. U.S. troops began distributing leaflets in Baghdad urging Iraqis to stay at home at night because of persisting security threats, U.S. officials said on Tuesday. Saddam himself has disappeared, as have most of his aides. Only two out of 55 officials on a U.S. "most wanted" list have so far been caught.

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