BAGHDAD — Attacks by insurgents and power struggles between political and religious blocs have forced a two-week delay in the convening of an Iraqi national conference, a process to choose a national assembly that was to have begun here tomorrow.
The delay was requested by the United Nations and agreed to by senior Iraqi government officials, as well as their U.S. advisers.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell called the postponement “a smart decision” and said it would not disrupt the schedule for elections in January.
The decision came one day after a car bombing killed 70 civilians outside a Baqouba police station.
Yesterday, an insurgent group linked to Jordanian militant Abu Musab Zarqawi said it had kidnapped a Somali truck driver and would behead him if his Kuwaiti company continued working in Iraq. Another group threatened to behead in 24 hours one of seven foreign truck drivers it was holding if its demands, which included a pullout by their company, were not met.
Also yesterday, a U.S. soldier was killed in clashes north of Baghdad, and a Polish soldier died in a roadside bombing. The American’s death raises the number of U.S. personnel killed in Iraq since the war began to at least 909, according to an Associated Press tally.
Later yesterday, Marines and Iraqi troops battled for hours with insurgents in the city of Fallujah, the military said.
In Brussels, NATO moved closer to an agreement on training Iraqi forces, but France refused to accept Washington’s demand that the NATO team’s commander be an American.
Under Iraq’s transitional administrative law, the 100 members of the interim national assembly were to have been chosen by 1,000 delegates by the end of this month. To delay the process would jeopardize the assembly’s credibility, Fouad Masoum, head of the conference’s organizing committee, said Tuesday.
But many Iraqis already had questioned the legitimacy of the process, which some see as unfairly favoring the former members of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council and the six political parties that supported the March 2003 invasion.
Several prominent Iraqi academics, religious figures and Arab nationalist associations have said that they will not take part in the congress.
Shi’ite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has said that he would not send representatives to the event, although he was invited to several weeks ago despite U.S. objections.
Slightly more than half the delegates to the conference this weekend were to have been selected by Iraq’s 18 provinces. But several major cities were unable to select their representatives and have suspended their effort.
Ethnically diverse cities such as Kirkuk failed to devise a formula for proportionate representation.
The national assembly will advise the interim Iraqi government until a new government is elected in January.
• This article is based in part on wire service reports.
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