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By wire servicesThe new prime minister says coalition forces will remain, even as a U.N. resolution is drafted assuring the right to evict them.
Iraq's new prime minister on Friday used his first address to the nation to tell Iraqis that, like it or not, they'll have to accept the presence of American soldiers in their country, and he urged them to end attacks on U.S. troops.
At the United Nations, the United States and Britain revised their plan for Iraq's interim government that will take power on June 30, giving it authority to order the U.S.-led multinational force to leave the country at any time.
But that request seemed unlikely to come any time soon.
"As Iraqis, we don't accept occupation," Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said in a brief speech broadcast on the U.S.-backed al-Iraqiya television station and picked up by Arab satellite channels.
But, he said, "the targeting of the multinational forces led by the United States to force them to leave Iraq would cause a major disaster to the Iraqi people, especially before the completion of the building of security and military institutions.
"And I would like to mention here that the coalition forces, too, have offered the blood of their sons as a result of terror attacks designed to force them to leave Iraq," he said.
Allawi has made clear from the moment his appointment was announced Tuesday that he thinks the United States must continue protecting Iraq, and he spent much of his 15-minute speech arguing that point.
Wearing a Western-style coat and tie, Allawi called on "the Iraqi people, people of heroism and sacrifice, to rise up" against the threat of violence in their country. He also called for disbanding armed militias, saying that that the democratic elections expected next year cannot succeed without the defeat of the guerrilla insurgency.
In addition to urging an end to attacks on international troops, Allawi called for an economic revitalization. He said he planned to increase workers' salaries and decrease Iraq's debts, incurred by the "foolish policies of Saddam (Hussein)."
He gave no specifics on how he planned to prop up the economy, other than saying he would seek to harness Iraq's natural resources.
Allawi, a secular Shiite, appeared to be speaking from the studios of al-Iraqiya TV, which are in the "Green Zone," a sprawling complex of American offices encircled by heavily armed U.S. soldiers.
His address came as the latest draft U.N. resolution, the third in less than two weeks, formally stated what British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Secretary of State Colin Powell have said publicly: that if asked, their troops would leave.
It declares that the council will terminate the mandate for the multinational force after further elections by Dec. 31, 2005, under a new constitution that will be drafted next year, or earlier "if requested by the sovereign government of Iraq."
The draft also spelled out limits on the new government's activities, barring it from taking "any actions affecting Iraq's destiny" beyond the seven months it will be in power.
While the new draft addressed some concerns raised by Iraq and Security Council members, it didn't address the relationship between the new interim government and the multinational force.
Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari had asked the council to detail this relationship. The Iraqis want a partnership with the force and to be consulted on major military operations that have political implications, such as the bloody, three-week Marine siege of Fallujah, a Sunni insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad.
TROOP CONTRIBUTIONS: The draft resolution also asks the 191 U.N. member states and regional organizations to contribute troops to the multinational force.
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told Abu Dhabi television Thursday that despite discussions, the United States has not received any new troop commitments.
Once a resolution is approved, he said, he will go to NATO headquarters in Brussels to try to get the alliance to participate, possibly by providing a "headquarters element or something like that." Currently, 16 NATO members contribute troops individually to the multinational force.
END OF OCCUPATION: Zebari told the Security Council that the interim government wants "a new and unambiguous resolution that will ensure the transfer of full power and sovereignty and put an end to the occupation."
The latest draft states more clearly that the U.S. and British occupation of Iraq will end by June 30, that the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority which has run the country "will cease to exist, and that full sovereignty will have been restored to Iraq."
WEAPONS INSPECTIONS: In an apparent response to Russian concerns, the latest draft for the first time addresses the future of U.N. weapons inspections in Iraq, which were halted just before the U.S.-led war that toppled Saddam Hussein. After the war, the United States barred U.N. inspectors from returning and deployed its own teams to search for weapons of mass destruction - so far unsuccessfully.
The new draft states that the Security Council still intends to re-examine the mandates of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, which is charged with overseeing the elimination of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons programs, and the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is responsible for eliminating any nuclear programs. It did not give a date.
ELECTION SYSTEM: Also Friday, U.N. officials said they would design an election system of proportional representation to select members to the 275-member National Assembly in January.
Carina Perelli, a senior U.N. elections official, said the organization's team had decided to hold elections based on a system of proportional representation, whereby voters across the country would choose a list of candidates, ordinarily supported by political parties. The number of votes received by a party nationwide would determine how many of its candidates who appeared on the list would take office.
Under the system, the percentage of votes received by a particular party would roughly equal the percentage of seats it would be awarded in the National Assembly.
Based on an estimate of the number of Iraqi voters, Perelli said a typical candidate would win a seat in the National Assembly if he or she captured between 26,000 and 27,000 votes nationwide.
Perelli said U.N. officials and the Iraqis with whom they consulted favored a proportional system, in part because that system tends to award seats to smaller parties, which a system of district elections would not. Also, Perelli said setting up districts quickly would be difficult.
- Information from Knight Ridder Newspapers, the Associated Press and New York Times was used in this report.