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--- Begin Message ----Caveat Lector- http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4251691,00.html Iraq Gov't Must Abide by U.S.-Made Laws Sunday June 27, 2004 8:31 PM By JIM KRANE Associated Press WriterBAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - The U.S. led-coalition, facing a Wednesday deadline to hand back power, has put in place major legal revisions that would force Iraqis to get drivers' licenses, obey traffic laws, ban certain people from holding office and place American contractors above the law. Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish politician and member of the disbanded U.S.-picked Governing Council, said he thinks the Americans began pushing the flurry of laws once it became clear the occupation would be cut short. Washington's earlier plans, he said, called for a longer occupation that would have allowed Iraq's constitution to be written under U.S. watch. Proponents say the sheaf of edicts signed by occupation chief L. Paul Bremer are the best way to ensure one of the top U.S. goals in invading Iraq: to leave behind a functioning democracy with a base of liberal institutions such as an independent judiciary, civil society and free market economy. But critics say the Coalition Provisional Authority's flurry of laws amounts to meddling in Iraq's basic institutions, something that international law places out of bounds for an occupying power. Especially irksome for Iraqi leaders is the fact that the occupier's edicts remain in force after the occupation ends - including laws that curtail the powers of the incoming government. ``We would prefer that Iraqis decide on their own laws,'' Othman said. ``This isn't the way to run a country that isn't your country.'' As Iraq's highest authority, Bremer has issued more than 100 orders and regulations, many of them Western-style laws governing everything from bankruptcy and traffic, to restrictions on child labor and copying movies. Some are likely to be ignored. One law requires at least a month in jail for people caught driving without a license - something many Iraqis do not have. Another demands that drivers stay in a single lane, a rule widely ignored in Iraq's chaotic streets. Others are more controversial. On Saturday, Bremer signed an edict that gives U.S. and other Western civilian contractors immunity from Iraqi law while performing their jobs in Iraq. The idea outrages many Iraqis, including Othman, who said the law allows foreigners to act with impunity even after the occupation. ``If they know they have full immunity, they will do anything they want because they know no one can do anything about it,'' Othman said. The law states that contractors can still be prosecuted under the laws of their home country. A Bremer elections law restricts certain candidates from running for office, banning parties with links to militias, for instance. The CPA's laws remain in effect after the occupation ends unless rescinded or revised by the interim government, a task that another Bremer-signed law allows, but only after a difficult process. ``What we are doing is really unprecedented,'' Scott Castle, an Army Reserve brigadier general who heads the CPA's legal team, said in an article published this month on the legal Web site of Law.com. ``We perform our duties not as a traditional occupier but as an occupier that is also a nation-builder.'' The CPA and its legal advisers did not respond to requests for interviews. Bremer's orders are needed because the interim government has virtually no authority to pass legislation of its own, other than a national budget, said Yahia Said, an Iraqi expert in democratic transition at the London School of Economics. He said the new laws will act as guidelines to get the country through an uncertain seven months before January's elections. The elected Iraqi government that takes office next year will be freer to rewrite - or throw out - the Bremer laws. But U.S. officials say they believe their legal handiwork will live on, if only because Iraqi legislators find it easier to keep them. ``More often than not, what has been set up as a temporary solution evolves into the natural state, once they get full sovereignty,'' a senior U.S. official said at a recent legal briefing. ``We don't anticipate any large scale revision or rescission of CPA orders,'' a senior CPA adviser added. ``There's simply no incentive to do that.'' The new laws showcase the latest thinking on the legal framework needed to attract foreign investment and prepare Iraq to join international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization, U.S. officials say. Inspectors-general appointed by Bremer to Iraqi ministries for five-year terms are supposed to function as a bulwark against corruption, rather than restrict the government's freedom of action, they say. Perhaps the biggest threat to the survival of Western-style laws is the election of a government led by Iraq's Islamic parties. In one scenario, Said suggested that Iraq's Shiite and Sunni Muslim parties could band together to write a constitution that borrows heavily from Islamic law, perhaps changing Bremer's edicts on banking and the rights of women and non-Muslims. ``If Islamists come to power, they will obviously change the laws,'' he said. Even after the handover, Castle said American lawyers will remain attached to the U.S. Embassy here that will replace the dissolving CPA after Wednesday. Those lawyers will keep giving advice to the fledgling Iraqi government, in hopes of keeping their laws in place. ``It's incumbent upon us to provide the follow-on technical advice, so that what we have done so far doesn't become a dead letter,'' Castle said. --- On the Net: CPA laws: http://www.iraqcoalition.org/regulations ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Yahoo! 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That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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