BAGHDAD, 8 January 2004 — As it prepares Iraq for self-rule in June, the United States said it would free hundreds of prisoners in Iraq and quadruple funds for the political transition.
But one of Iraq’s most respected religious leaders criticized the plans for the handover of power.
A statement from the office of Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, the most senior cleric in the majority Shiite community, said a transitional government in June and elections next year “doesn’t ensure in any way the fair representation of the Iraqi people”.
Sistani said he wanted elections to be held before June but had been told that was not feasible. He said there had to be “another solution that is honest to the Iraqi people’s demands”.
It was a rare comment on politics from the reclusive cleric, whom the US-led authority has been trying to woo, but apparently with little success. But there appeared to be little chance the transition plan would be changed.
Meanwhile, Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende made a surprise visit to Iraq yesterday to meet Dutch troops based in the south of the country. His arrival follows the weekend trip to Iraq by Britain’s Tony Blair and US President George W. Bush’s Thanksgiving Day appearance in Baghdad.
And Washington opened bidding for $5 billion in 17 new contracts to rebuild Iraq, the first in a string of deals funded by $18.6 billion appropriated by Congress.
The United States said on Tuesday it would more than quadruple to $458 million its spending to build a new government in Iraq, develop political parties and prepare elections.
US officials said they would release more than 500 Iraqis held as low-level security threats in the last eight months.
“It is time for reconciliation, time for Iraqis to make common cause,” Paul Bremer, the US administrator in Iraq, told a news conference.
“In a gesture to give impetus to those Iraqis who wish to reconcile with their countrymen, the coalition will permit some currently detained offenders to return to their homes and families.”
An estimated 9,000 security detainees are currently being held by US forces in Iraq and many more have been briefly detained and released since Saddam was ousted in April.
Bremer said those suspected of serious violent crimes would not be freed. “This is not a program for those with blood-stained hands. No person directly involved in the death or serious bodily harm to any human being will be released.”
He said the new, softer approach would be accompanied by a crackdown on remaining diehard insurgents, part of what a coalition official described as a “carrot and stick” approach.
As well as a $10 million reward already being offered for the capture of Izzat Ibrahim, Saddam’s chief deputy, $1 million bounties have been put on the heads of 12 other members of the 55-most-wanted list who US forces say remain at large.
Bremer said a new program offering up to $200,000 for information leading to the capture or death of other insurgency leaders not among the 55, would soon be introduced.
Defense officials in Washington said they were considering putting in place a more senior military officer as the overall commander in Iraq in the run-up to sovereignty.
In Iraq’s northern oil-rich town of Kirkuk, postwar violence continued as assailants fired rockets at a police patrol on Tuesday night, killing one man and wounding two, police said.
Also on Tuesday, police fired on stone-throwing former soldiers demanding their salaries in the southern town on Basra, killing two and wounding two others.
— Additional input from agencies
