BAGHDAD, 29 April 2003 — Iraqis across the political spectrum said yesterday they would try to set up an interim government in one month. Around 250 delegates reached agreement to hold a national congress within four weeks that would elect the first Iraqi government after the fall of Saddam’s brutal 24-year reign.

“Hopefully we will have this national meeting that will select or elect the interim authority,” said Zalmay Khalilzad, the top US envoy to Iraq’s emerging political movements.

“The decision here was to do the government within four weeks. There’s a strong message to the coalition from the participants that an Iraqi government needs to be formed as quickly as possible,” he said.

The announcement came as sharp divisions emerged between exiles who have lived away from Iraq for years and who favor a quick US exit, and local Iraqis who suffered under Saddam and are doubtful over their preparedness to lead the nation.

“It is our responsibility to start the process of the birth of democracy in Iraq here today,” said retired US Gen. Jay Garner, the man in charge of Iraq until a new government is formed.

“We have a chance for your sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters, to be safe, to be free, and have the opportunity to live in peace and prosperity,” he said.

“Today, on the birthday of Saddam Hussein, let us start the democratic process for the children of Iraq,” he said, noting the symbolic timing of the gathering at what was once Saddam’s showpiece convention center.

Muslim religious leaders, Kurdish officials, tribal dignitaries, farmers and businessmen from across Iraq joined longtime exiles at the conference.

A senior US official in Garner’s team had said Sunday that the meeting would be a chance for “emerging personalities” to assert their influence but there appeared to be no sign of a dominant force to lead a democratic Iraq.

“There was not a majority for any of them,” Nasir Al-Chadechy, from the National Democratic Party, told AFP.

Like a smaller meeting of about 70 delegates in southern Iraq two weeks ago, several prominent figures were absent as Iraq’s complex mix of political, religious, ethnic and tribal communities jockey for power in the new Iraq.

A spokesman for the main Shiite movement that opposed Saddam, the Iran-based Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI), told Al-Jazeera television it would not take part in any US-led meetings.

Delegates expressed differences over whether the United States, which has not said when it will hand over power, should have a role in the country after an interim government is formed and until elections are held.

“There are differences over the role of the Americans. We here prefer the Americans to rule us in the interim period,” said Suheil Al-Suheil, a Baghdad lawyer. “We are not ready to handle this yet. Saddam’s orphans are still alive.”

The United States has already said it will not accept an Iranian-style regime, even though Shiites have been asserting their newfound political power.

Thousands of Shiites rallied in downtown Baghdad during yesterday’s meeting, calling for a greater say in the political future of Iraq, while the United States has yet to say how long it will take before handing over power.

“I think the meeting went extremely well,” said Mike O’Brien, junior government minister from Britain, the chief US ally in the war that toppled Saddam on April 9.

“A lot of people voiced their opinions and we got an agreed declaration at the end,” he said. “There were people arguing passionately...we are moving the process of forming a new administration forward.”

Most delegates insisted that security was the top priority, which Garner pledged his team was also placing at the head of its list.

A senior member of Garner’s team said that a third meeting would be held in northern Iraq, and delegates said it would likely be in Mosul in the next two or three weeks.

As politicians discussed the creation of an interim government, pockets of resistance continued to trouble US forces outside the capital. In the northern city of Mosul, US forces came under heavy fire and retaliated by sending helicopter gunships into action.

“They were firing from in and around a crowd. Friendly forces returned fire and the result was four or five enemy killed,” US Staff Sgt. Gregg Sanders said.

Meanwhile, USA Today said in a report that Iraq’s former deputy prime minister, Tareq Aziz, has told US interrogators that Saddam survived two airstrikes launched to kill him. Aziz, who is being questioned at an undisclosed location, said he saw Saddam alive after the March 19 and April 7 airstrikes on Baghdad targeting the former Iraqi leader and his two sons, the newspaper reported, citing a senior defense official.

But USA Today quoted the official as also saying that interrogators had concluded that Aziz was lying about other matters that had come up during questioning.

Aziz, the most recognizable of the 13 former Iraqi officials in US custody, surrendered to US forces last Thursday. He was No. 43 on the US list of 55 most-wanted members of Saddam’s administration.

US officials have said the fate of the toppled Iraqi president remains unknown amid mixed reports about whether Saddam was dead or alive.

US war commander Gen. Tommy Franks said on Sunday that Aziz was providing a lot of information to US intelligence interrogators. He did not elaborate. “What we don’t know is the veracity of it. It will take time,” Franks was quoted as saying.