- Iraqis voiced cautious optimism for the future at the
end of years of crippling UN sanctions, as Washington used its new powers
to dissolve Saddam Hussein's armed forces and markets awaited the resumption
of Iraqi oil exports.
-
- "People will live their lives again, think about
building homes and investing," said Iraqi economic analyst Fadhel
Ali on Friday. "They have been longing for this moment for 13 years."
-
- The UN Security Council's vote on Thursday gave war allies
the United States and Britain broad control over the devastated country's
future, in particular its vast oil wealth.
-
- It also opened the way for UN Secretary General Kofi
Annan to appoint a special representative to work with the US-led occupying
forces in rebuilding Iraq.
-
- World leaders hailed a new era of international cooperation
over Iraq after the vote. France, Germany and Russia all welcomed the adoption
of the resolution they had voted for, marking a turning point in the diplomatic
stand-off over their opposition to the invasion of Iraq.
-
- Even Syria, the only Arab member of the Security Council,
which boycotted the vote in which the resolution was approved unanimously
by the remaining 14 council members, said Friday it had changed its mind
and wished to back it.
-
- The US-led administration in Iraq meanwhile abolished
the Iraqi army and the vast network of security services which used informants
and terror to prop up Saddam's regime.
-
- Iraq's US administrator Paul Bremer announced that a
non-political army would be created in its place as he stepped up efforts
to reassure nervous Iraqis that Saddam's brutal 24-year reign was now history.
-
- "These actions are part of a robust campaign to
show the Iraqi people that the Saddam regime is gone and will never return,"
a senior official from the US-led coalition said.
-
- Bremer's decree, which came a day after around 200,000
"full" members of Saddam's Baath Party were ordered to turn themselves
in, dissolved the regular army, the Republican Guard and the defence and
information ministries.
-
- In practice the army was already dissolved by the US
and British military victory that toppled Saddam but former soldiers have
protested on the streets of Baghdad demanding their back pay and a role
in Iraq's future.
-
- The order said that employees and eligible personnel
would be paid around one month's salary in severance, and that war widows
and retirees would continue to receive their pensions.
-
- The US-led coalition has blamed some of the crime that
has rocked post-war Iraq on gangs of Baathists which it says have been
reforming with intent to undermine both its authority and the reconstruction
process.
-
- The coalition on Friday issued its second appeal this
week for Iraqis to come forward with information on weapons of mass destruction,
promising them cash and protection from possible retribution by former
officials.
-
- "Do what's right for you and your country. Inform
coalition forces immediately of the location of the mass destruction weapons
of the former regime," coalition radio said in a statement broadcast
in Arabic.
-
- The pursuit of alleged weapons of mass destruction by
Saddam's regime was cited as one of the main reasons the coalition went
to war against Iraq in March.
-
- UN Resolution 1483 adopted Thursday makes no firm commitment
to a return of UN weapons inspectors to Iraq, a measure France and Russia
had been pushing for before sanctions could be lifted.
-
- Oil prices plunged after Thursday's Security Council
vote, which allowed Iraq to resume oil exports immediately and set up a
new Development Fund for Iraq to be financed by Iraq's oil revenues.
-
- New York oil prices shed more than a dollar a barrel.
-
- But prices rose on Friday as traders braced themselves
for the start of the consumption-heavy US "driving season".
-
- Analysts said that given the crumbling state of Iraq's
energy infrastructure, very little oil was likely to hit the markets in
the immediate future.
-
- "In terms of actual flow, right now there is perhaps
350,000 barrels per day which is barely enough to satisfy Iraqi domestic
demand," said Barclays Capital analyst Orrin Middleton in London.
-
- "There is a lot of talk about production reaching
1.5 million barrels per day by the end of June, but that is still a month
away," he said.
-
- Companies from Britain and elsewhere in Europe were meeting
US construction firm Bechtel in London on Friday in the hope of winning
lucrative contracts to rebuild Iraq's shattered infrastructure.
-
- The gathering has attracted controversy amid reports
that Bechtel, accused of having uncomfortably close ties to the US government,
has been told by US officials to hand out work only to countries who backed
the war in Iraq.
-
- The Wall Street Journal quoted an official as saying
that Bechtel had been specifically told to exclude French companies.
-
- In April, the US Agency for International Development
chose Bechtel as the main contractor in rebuilding Iraq, a deal that could
be worth up to 680 million dollars (580 million euros) over the next 18
months.
-
- In Athens meanhwile the city's lawyers' association said
it plans to sue Britain at the Hague-based International Court of Justice
over crimes against humanity allegedly committed in the Iraq war.
-
- On a visit to Baghdad, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander
Downer said he wanted to see more done to bring Iraqis into the political
process as he visited the violence-ridden capital to reopen the Australian
diplomatic mission.
-
- The Iraqi countryside saw celebratory gunfire late Thursday,
with tracer bullets and flares lighting up the sky as people celebrated
the lifting of the hated sanctions.
-
- But some, such as Khaled Ali Mustafa in Baghdad, who
described himself as a poet, saw the UN vote as a sign the United States
wanted to tighten its grip on the nation.
-
- "It's a cover-up for the occupation," he said.
-
-
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