VOL. XLVI
No 28
14
The Political Scene (14 July 2003)
The Americans and Iraqis may finally be in agreement on how to proceed with the country’s political reconstruction. The Americans remained unrepentant and the Turks remained furious after US troops arrested members of the Turkish special forces in north Iraq. The liberals have lost out in Kuwait’s parliamentary elections.
The Political Council Evolves
In what could prove to be the most significant political development since the end of the war in Iraq, the Americans have apparently decided that the Iraqis themselves are to be allowed to select an interim governing body with real powers – and the main Iraqi political parties have signed on to the plan. Initially, in early June, US ambassador Paul Bremer announced that the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) intended to nominate a 25-30 member political “council” whose function would be consultative and advisory, a plan which received a tepid welcome at best from most Iraqis (and was actively opposed by senior Shi'a clerics). Now, however, according to UN special envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello on 6 July, Mr Bremer “has made some concessions and gradually turned this council, which at the outset was only consultative, into a council to which he is prepared to delegate a certain number of powers.” It is true that Mr Bremer will retain the power of veto. But the new body, to be known as the Transitional Governing Council, will have some 20 members selected by the Iraqis to reflect the country’s confessional and ethnic composition and will enjoy what Mr de Mello described as “real executive powers,” including the power to select ministers and Iraq’s international representatives. According to respected
former foreign minister 'Adnan Pachachi, the council “would be nearer to a government than a political council as it will have a broad set of responsibilities and legislative and executive authorities” and will “appoint ministers and enact laws whether those related to currency, education, economy and all other fields.” Mr Pachachi’s implicit endorsement of the transitional council was echoed explicitly by the seven parties which formed the “leadership council” before the war - the Kurdistan Democratic Party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the Iraqi National Congress, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Iraqi National Accord, the Shi'a Da'wa party and the Sunni Iraqi Democratic Movement – which issued a statement on 7 July welcoming Mr Bremer’s decision as “a step in the right direction toward the creation of an interim Iraqi government.” So assuming that the Americans do not change their mind yet again, it looks as if the CPA and the Iraqis are for the first time on the same wavelength about the course to be followed in the country’s political reconstruction.
US Arrests Turkish Forces
Relations between Ankara and Washington, already soured by Turkey’s refusal to allow the US to use its territory as a springboard for attacking Iraq, have been further strained as a result of a bizarre incident in northern Iraq in which eleven members of the Turkish special forces were arrested in Sulaimaniya by US troops on 4 July and held for two days before being released on 6 July. Amid reports in the Turkish press that the Turkish soldiers may have been planning to assassinate the Kurdish governor of Kirkuk, the Americans remained unapologetic and the Turks were plainly furious. By way of explanation, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher would say only that “what I can tell you is that the US military was acting on reports of disturbing activities they might have been involved in.” Meanwhile Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Vice President Dick Cheney during a telephone call on 7 July that he expected those behind the arrests to be brought to account
and expressed the hope that “friends and allies from now on will not act on intelligence supplied by wrong sources. One should take information directly from its allies.” On the same day the Turkish army chief of staff, Hilmi Ozkok, warned that “this incident has led to the biggest crisis of confidence between Turkish and US forces and has turned into a crisis,” adding that “considering the senior status of the people we contacted and the amount of time before the soldiers’ release, I find it difficult to evaluate this merely as a local incident” and that “I do not know what the intelligence was, but it is totally unacceptable that intelligence be investigated in this manner.” The Americans for their part sent the chief of staff of US forces in Europe, Lt Gen John Sylvestsr, to Turkey in an attempt to defuse the situation, and the US ambassador in Ankara, Robert Pearson, was quoted on 10 July as emphasizing that “both sides want to understand what happened in Sulaimaniya and prevent the repetition of such incidents.” But in the same day Mr Erdogan sounded distinctly unmollified when he declared that “the stand of our government has been one of uncompromising realism and determination…It is determined to pursue this stand in the coming period as well.”
Liberals Lose Out In Kuwait
Kuwait’s 5 July parliamentary elections followed the trend set in Jordan last month (MEES, 23 June) when tribal candidates loyal to the ruling family and Islamists came out on top. In Kuwait, tribal and other supporters of the ruling al-Sabah family won about half the 50 seats in the National Assembly, with Islamists winning a further third, leaving liberal reformers with only three seats, as compared to the previous eight. According to observers in Kuwait this means that the government is likely to have an easier time in the new parliament than the old. And while the composition of the new assembly probably accurately reflects the profoundly conservative nature of Kuwaiti society, it is unlikely to encourage the kind of vigorous debate that occasionally characterized the previous parliament.
Charles Snow