Rival ethnic groups to vote in Iraq's first ballot

5.45pm

BAGHDAD - In the first vote in Iraq since Saddam Hussein was ousted last month, rival ethnic groups in Mosul were set to elect an interim council on Monday and a leading Iraqi Kurdish group made its voice heard in Damascus.

Barham Saleh of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan said on Sunday it had briefed the Syrian government on its role in efforts to form a national government in a step toward rebuilding the country's local administration.

In Mosul, US troops established a strong security presence at the community hall chosen to host the voting.

More than 200 delegates from the various ethnic and religious groups will elect a chamber of council members and then immediately choose a mayor from a list of candidates.

The council will consist of three Kurds, one Christian, one Assyrian, one Turkmen and seven Arabs inside the city; along with one Yezidian, one Christian and three Muslims from tribes outside Mosul, brigade commander Colonel Joseph Anderson said.

It will include two former generals and representatives from eight government ministries: police, health, commerce, banking, education, public works, municipalities and fuel.

Mosul, Iraq's third largest city, is mainly Arab, with a large Kurdish minority as well as Turkmens, Assyrians and other groups.

The ethnic mix fuelled fears of factional fighting after a wave of looting and violence last month, but military officials are now holding it up as a "model city," citing solid progress in restoring order.

In Damascus, Saleh told a news conference, "We stressed that we are aspiring for the support of our brethren in Syria to back stability and security in Iraq. We informed them of our visions and discussed with them the techniques that will be followed to form an independent (Iraqi) national government."

The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan is one of the two Kurdish factions controlling the Kurd-majority enclave in northern Iraq.

"Syria certainly has an important and unique political weighting," Saleh said without elaboration after meeting Vice President Abdel-Halim Khaddam and deputy secretary general of Syria's ruling Socialist Arab Baath Party, Abdullah al-Ahmar.

Saleh said Iraq's Kurds had no separatist ambitions.

"There were those who said that Kurds will seise the opportunity of the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime to announce an independent Kurdish state ... but the Kurdish leadership did not," he said.

In Washington, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld reminded Syria and other countries in the region of the swift and sure US conquest of Iraq.

Rumsfeld, fresh from an eight-nation tour of the Gulf region following the war, told Fox News Sunday the decisive US defeat of Saddam's government was "a demonstration to the world that an awful lot of countries don't think it's a good idea for countries to have weapons of mass destruction, or to be on the terrorist list, or to have relationships with terrorist networks."

"That message is a good message for the world. It's a healthy one ... and we may see some behaviour modification."

Elsewhere, Iraqis dug corpses from a mass grave.

At a farmland site near the Shi'ite Muslim holy city of Najaf, Iraqis clawed through earth to uncover scores of bodies, some with blindfolds and hands tied, of men and women apparently executed during a 1991 Shi'ite uprising.

Tens of thousands of Shi'ites and Kurds are thought to have been killed when Saddam's forces crushed revolts after US-led forces drove Iraqi troops from Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War.

At the farm site near Najaf, Iraqis searching for missing friends and family found rotting clothes that held together little more than skeletons or bones. Witnesses watched them being wrapped in white sheets and tagged with plastic identity cards.

By the end of the day, 47 bundles of remains had been reburied in unmarked graves.

"This is the tip of the iceberg in this country," said Captain Mike Urena, a US Marines civil affairs officer who visited a second site on Sunday and then turned it over to local Red Crescent authorities. "I am sure you will find more."

In Baghdad, hundreds of unarmed police were back in their familiar uniforms of blue trousers and white shirts on Sunday, directing traffic at clogged junctions and patrolling in blue-and-white police cars.

Rumsfeld also said he was confident Saddam would be found if still alive and his weapons of mass destruction uncovered.

One of the main reasons the United States and Britain invaded Iraq in March was to rid the country of weapons of mass destruction -- of which nothing has so far been found.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell also said he was "absolutely sure that there are weapons of mass destruction there, and the evidence will be forthcoming."

A 10-nation stabilisation force led by the United States, Britain and Poland plans to deploy in Iraq by the end of May.

The US-led body charged with Iraq's reconstruction said it had appointed Thamir Abbas Ghadhban, an experienced, British-educated Iraqi oil technocrat, to run the oil ministry.

US officials have said Iraqis will run all ministries with the help of American advisers and experienced Iraqis who have been living abroad in the United States or elsewhere.

Phillip Carroll, former head of Royal Dutch/Shell in the United States, will head an advisory board to the ministry, backed up by Fadhil Othman, an Iraqi exile who had 20 years' experience in Iraq's State Oil Marketing Organisation.

Reviving Iraq's oil industry, which boasts the second largest proven reserves after Saudi Arabia, is crucial to rebuilding a ravaged economy dependent on crude exports.

The United Nations, which oversees the "oil-for-food" programme set up to alleviate the suffering of ordinary Iraqis under UN sanctions, has said it needs a competent authority in Iraq to sign and certify exports before sales can resume.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq