Iraq

Lugar: Bush will have to settle for less in Iraq

WASHINGTON - Compromises necessary to fashion democracy in Iraq will make any post-Saddam Hussein government less than the model of freedom the Bush administration wants as an example for the Middle East, a leading senator said Sunday.

Even a limited democratic system will require "trying out for size how you get a religious regime and a secular and a democratic regime together, how you keep Kurds together, how you keep Iraq together, without civil war," said GOP Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, said thrashing that out will not be easy and might not have the expected outcome. Asked on NBC's Meet the Press whether a democratic Iraq is an honest goal, Pelosi said: "I'm not sure that it - we have to stay to see that out."

WASHINGTON - President Bush keeps in his White House offices a trophy of one of his high points in the Iraq war, the pistol that Saddam Hussein held when soldiers pulled him from his underground hideaway Dec. 13.

Military specialists mounted the sidearm, and soldiers who helped in the deposed Iraqi president's capture presented it to the president, the White House said Sunday. The president keeps the gun in a small study adjoining the Oval Office.

CAIRO - Despite war and occupation, Iraq has seen a surge in human rights organizations, political parties and independent newspapers - entities almost unheard of under Saddam Hussein, said a report by an Arab think tank.

The report by Egypt's Ibn Khaldoun Center for Development Studies welcomed the promise of elections, the freedom of expression and independence of the media but was careful not to credit the Americans for the progress.

"Even though all indications of political rights and human rights mentioned in this report clearly illustrate that the situation in Iraq after occupation is much better than Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the truth remains that any situation would have been better than Saddam Hussein," stated the report, "Civil Society, Democratic Transformation and Minorities in the Arab World."

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