Iraqis generally accept new government -UN envoy
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-06-08 08:38

Iraqis generally accept the interim government headed for power in Iraq on June 30, albeit with misgivings, the U.N. envoy who helped shape the new government told the Security Council on Monday.

Lakhdar Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister, also called on the new government to reach out to vocal critics of the political process in their country and "resist the temptation to characterize all who have opposed the occupation as terrorists and bitter-enders."

And he urged the U.S. military to quickly free as many inmates as possible from its prisons in Iraq, and reassure the Iraqi people that abuses like those documented by the now-infamous photos taken at the Abu Ghraib detention center "cannot happen again."

"As you may have seen through the media, this government is generally found acceptable by the Iraqi people," Brahimi said in a briefing to the Security Council on the political transition to take place at the end of the month.

"Some are more cautious and, in some quarters, there may be stronger opposition but the Iraqi people seem to be willing to give them a chance to prove themselves," he told the council, which is considering a U.S.-British draft resolution that would endorse the transition and set out security arrangements.

Washington and London are pressing for a quick vote on the resolution, perhaps as early as Tuesday, and were dealing on Monday with the disposition of a final flurry of amendments.

Brahimi cautioned that June 30 would mark only a new phase of the political process eventually leading to an elected government in 2005, and not the end of the line.

He again laid out the problems encountered by his U.N. team in assembling a list of names acceptable to Paul Bremer, Iraq's U.S. governor, the now-defunct U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, and the country's myriad political, ethnic and tribal groupings.

Yet taken as a package, the new government "has a great deal of talent and is well positioned to bring the country together during the next seven months or so," he said, noting the conditional approval given it last week by Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most influential Muslim cleric.

"At the same time, the Iraqi people will ultimately judge them on the basis of what they do," Brahimi said.