Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Basm Özeti
posed if thejudge wishes, Shibibi and
others said.
Iraqi officials insist Saddam and the
othets will get fair trials. ¥ked whether
justice includes the possibility that
Saddam could walk out a free man, perhaps
On a legal technicality, Bayati said
.ther~ was "no chance at all"
"The whole world will see this,". said;
Bayati, who said he was tortured in Sad:
dam's prisons in the 1970s."He won't be
able to walk free." (NYT; Reuters)
'Recruits
Hussein Malia/The Associated Press'
for the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, a support force for the new interim government, training on Thesday in Baghdad.
.A cautious salute.from Arab world
aJ-.:t"
~~~.Iraq transfer s~en in Egypt as 'positive step on fight road'
E-t. ~' By Neil MacFarquhar cial Al Abram, noted the event as ban- Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman,
:g 1::' ner news but ran no commentary. It fo- called the transfer a positive step and
5 .:t. CAIRO: The Arab world gave a cau- cused instead on the state of affairs in one removed from the occupation. "The
= tious welcome on Thesday to the hastily the Arab-Israeli dispute, a far more im- interim government is expected to
-a completed transfer of authority in Iraq, portant issue to many. . provide grounds for the restoration of
c:l with governments and commentators People asked at random about the full sovereignty, the real end of the oc-
~ mostly saying they hoped that this event tended to shrug it off, too, also be- cupation and free and timely general
53 would diminish the violence, although lieving that with about 160,000 foreign elections," he said.
. Ii some jeered the United States for creat- "The wrong policies of the occupiers
- ing a Potemkin village. . have brought about terrible, insecure
J:l .Egypt's foreign minister, Ahmed Ma- 'Iraq was not liberated conditi~ns in Iraq, and the Iraqi people
her, issued a statement calling the trans-
must do all they can to restore the dam-
. fer "a positivestep on the rightroad, .from the grip of the age and negative effects left behind by
leading to Iraqis taking control of their
the occupiers," Asefi said.
own affairs and total sovereignty." American occupation.' Syria,whichhas beencriticalofthein-
Having the Iraqis run their own affairs
is part of a process that should lead
vasion, took its usual cautious approach,
calling the handover a positive step that
to more stability, he said in a comment troops on the ground, Iraq could hardly it hoped would lead to full sovereignty
.echoed by many. . be considered sovereign. and an end to the Iraqis' suffering.
Not a few observers mocked the u.s. "The occupation is changing its skin," There is no small concern in the refor
its transfer-by-stealth, with the U.S. wrote Joseph Samaha, editor in chief of gion that Iraq might yet split into three
. administrator, L. Paul Bremer 3rd, leav- the Beirut daily Al Safir. Referring to states mirroring its ethnic components.
ing alone aboard a military aircraft the new U.S. ambassador.. he added,' Some commentators suggested that a
from the Baghdad airport that the U.S. "The influence of John Negroponte will government steered by Iraqis would be
has failed to open to commercial traffic, be no less than that of Paul Bremer, even more sensitive to preventing that.
,one of many promises unmet due to if they have different names." ' There was also a sense that the curconstant
violence. Washington's "collision with the rent state of affairs in Iraq was the best.
"In a scene bordering on the ridicu- reality ofIraq" forced it to act the way it option available considering the tur-,
lous, the United States transferred did, Samaha wrote, adding that Wash- moil since Saddam Hussein was overpower
to an interim Iraqi government,'1 ington still hoped its hand-picked gov- thrown in Apri12003. .
said a front-page editorial on Nahdet eniment would somehow rescue the "No one is expecting the reality on the'
Misr, one of Egypt's new independent' projecttoturnIraqintoamodeldemoc- ground to change overnight," wrote Ali
dailies. "The formalities took place in racy able to influence the rest of the re- Ibrahim in the Al Sharq al-Awsat daily
the atmosphere of a funeral. gion. published in London. As long as the for-
"Iraq was not liberated from the grip Some, commentators and even gov- eign troops remain and the violence
of the Ameritan occupation," the com- ernments said they hoped that Iraq continues, the question about how much
mentary added. "American troops are would not become an American stooge, the Iraqis actually control their own
still spread across its land and are going that somehow the new Iraqi govern- country will linger, he wrote, saying,
to stay for years to come, according' to ment would find the means to truly "But this is all neglecting a central ques-
Amencan officials themselves." wrest control of the country. tion: Does anyone have a better option?"
Some papers, like Egypt's semioffi- Ih Tehran, Hamed Reza Asefi, the The New York TImes
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