National Assembly

KABUL, Afghanistan - Hamid Karzai, who was selected to lead the country for the next 18 months by the traditional grand council gathered here, tried yesterday to reach out to all of the nation's ethnic and regional groups as he asked the delegates to form a National Assembly to work with him. "We should create a council from the delegates here that should work with us over the next 18 months," he said. "They should hold a hand of anger over me so I do not go too far." It was another effort to involve the people in the decision-making process and placate many delegates who say that no one has been responding to their concerns.

In choosing a slate of pro-Western moderates to form a new national assembly, voters in Libya'sfirst elections since the ouster of former dictator Moammar Gadhafi last year have shown that the rise of democracy in the Arab world doesn't automatically lead to governments dominated by Islamists. Preliminary tallies from the balloting Saturday indicate a coalition led by Mahmoud Jibril, an American-trained engineer who served as interim prime minister of the rebel government in Benghazi, holding a substantial lead over a rival bloc backed by the Muslim Brotherhood.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi formally threw his hat in the ring yesterday for the nation's Jan. 30 election, announcing a slate of 240 candidates that is likely to become a key contender in the race. But Allawi, who will head the slate, delayed his announcement by several hours yesterday and declined to release other names on his list. That raised speculation about last-minute haggling behind the scenes. In particular, it was unclear whether interim President Ghazi Ajil Yawer would join Allawi's list of candidates for the new national assembly or instead form his own slate.

Leaders of three Sunni political parties joined together yesterday to compete in the Dec. 15 parliamentary elections, a sign that the country's embittered Sunni Arab minority might play a more active role in the democratic process. The alliance, the Iraqi Concord Front, will field candidates in the elections for a new National Assembly and work as a bloc to advance Sunni interests, said leaders of the three groups involved: the Iraqi Islamic Party, the National Dialogue Council and the Iraqi People's Gathering.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's feuding political factions set March 16 as the date for the first meeting of the country's newly elected National Assembly, as negotiations on the formation of a new government inched forward yesterday. By setting a date, political leaders said they hoped to accelerate the painfully slow bargaining over jobs that has delayed the first meeting of the National Assembly, leaving Iraqis without a democratically elected government more than five weeks after they went to the polls.

HUGO CHAVEZ, Venezuela's would-be dictator who failed at a coup in 1992 and had to win power by election in 1998, has been re-elected to a six-year term under a new constitution of his making. President Chavez won handily last week, but his coalition took only about 60 percent of the 165-member national assembly. His allies took less than one-half of the 23 governorships, so there was a recount Tuesday giving them more than one-half. This provoked riots. After Sunday, foreign observers pronounced it a fair election.

Constitutional revisions adopted by El Salvador's National Assembly provide a basis for peace after 11 years of destructive civil war. But it is not peace. What remains is for a cease-fire to be worked out among the army, the civilian government ofPresident Alfredo Cristiani and the guerrillas of the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front. The posterity of El Salvador will not lightly forgive whoever might obstruct that cease-fire from signature and implementation.The reforms enacted were at the heart of an agreement that was hammered out between the government and the insurrectionists during intense negotiations in Mexico City.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Minutes before a key deadline, Iraq's leaders decided yesterday to give themselves another week to agree on a new constitution and resolve fundamental disagreements over the future and identity of the country. After meeting for several hours, a group of senior Iraqi leaders told the National Assembly that they had been unable to resolve a number of critical issues, including the role of Islam, the rights of women, the sharing of the country's vast oil wealth and whether to grant majority Shiite Arabs a semi- independent region in the south.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's political heavyweights, struggling to overcome deep differences over oil and Islam, failed to agree on a draft constitution yesterday despite the expectations of U.S. and Iraqi officials. The move surprised members of the 275-member National Assembly who had gathered to examine, discuss and vote on a proposed charter, which President Jalal Talabani had announced would be delivered by yesterday. Instead, Kurdish leader Talabani, along with representatives of the majority Shiites, some Sunni Arab politicians, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and U.N. envoy Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, met late into the night in an attempt to resolve several contentious issues - such as whether provinces will have the ability to impose Islamic law on citizens and how the country's oil wealth will be distributed.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - With the clock ticking on tomorrow's deadline for the completion of Iraq's new constitution, negotiators reported progress on several key issues yesterday, including the name of their country, but differences remained on the key issues of federalism and the role of religion. In one breakthrough, a consensus was reached that the country would be called the Iraqi Republic, not the federal republic or the Arab republic or the Islamic republic, as the Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites had respectively demanded.

BAGHDAD, IRAQ -- Iraq's transitional National Assembly approved the final draft of the new constitution yesterday while mourning the death of an assassinated legislator. A flower-ringed portrait was placed in the seat of Faris Nasir Hussein, whose car was ambushed by gunmen Saturday night north of Baghdad. Hussein, a member of Iraq's Shabak ethnic minority who was elected to parliament on the Kurdish ticket, was on his way from his home in Mosul to attend yesterday's assembly session when he was attacked.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Shiite and Kurdish politicians beat a midnight deadline yesterday and submitted a draft constitution to Iraq's National Assembly, but lawmakers postponed voting on the document for three days in a final bid to gain the support of skeptical Sunni Arab leaders. After months of negotiations and a one-week extension, lawmakers had been expected to either approve a draft constitution by yesterday, officially endorse another delay or scrap the whole process and start over with new elections.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's political heavyweights, struggling to overcome deep differences over oil and Islam, failed to agree on a draft constitution yesterday despite the expectations of U.S. and Iraqi officials. The move surprised members of the 275-member National Assembly who had gathered to examine, discuss and vote on a proposed charter, which President Jalal Talabani had announced would be delivered by yesterday. Instead, Kurdish leader Talabani, along with representatives of the majority Shiites, some Sunni Arab politicians, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and U.N. envoy Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, met late into the night in an attempt to resolve several contentious issues - such as whether provinces will have the ability to impose Islamic law on citizens and how the country's oil wealth will be distributed.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - With the clock ticking on tomorrow's deadline for the completion of Iraq's new constitution, negotiators reported progress on several key issues yesterday, including the name of their country, but differences remained on the key issues of federalism and the role of religion. In one breakthrough, a consensus was reached that the country would be called the Iraqi Republic, not the federal republic or the Arab republic or the Islamic republic, as the Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites had respectively demanded.

BAGHDAD - A suicide bomb aimed at a U.S. military convoy tore through a busy downtown square yesterday, killing an American soldier and at least six Iraqis and injuring scores of people. Assassins also gunned down 10 city police officers in five neighborhoods during a one-hour period. Across the country, a total of at least 22 Iraqis were killed in acts of violence as Iraqi political leaders continued their meetings on the drafting of the new national constitution. Insurgents killed a police officer in Baqubah and attacked a minivan of pilgrims traveling to Iran, killing three of them, according to local police.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Sunni Arab leaders who suspended participation in drafting Iraq's new constitution after one of their negotiators was assassinated said yesterday that they would return to the talks, probably today, after receiving assurances from Iraqi and U.S. officials. "We have decided to rejoin," said Ayad Samuray, a member of the Sunni delegation and a senior figure in the Iraqi Islamic Party. The Sunni delegates had left last week after one of their negotiators, Mijbal Issa, was assassinated along with a legal adviser to the delegation.

KARACHI, Pakistan -- Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's political career may be in jeopardy if kidnapping and terrorism charges against her husband are sustained.Analysts feel that the government must have obtained a "smoking gun," probably testimony from the prime suspect in the kidnapping of a British philanthropist-businessman and extortion of funds from him.Miss Bhutto has denied the charges against her husband, saying, "I will not be blackmailed by these gutter politicians."

Benazir Bhutto, the first woman to head the government of a Muslim country, is also the fourth, returning to office in Pakistan where she was deposed in 1990. Turkey and Bangladesh adopted woman prime ministers in the interim.She is the Pakistani politician who best communicates with the common people, many of whom revere her. She is the one who best communicates with the West, thanks to her Harvard and Oxford education. But she is the one who communicates worst with the army generals and religious mullahs, who may constitute the real, as opposed to apparent, government.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraqi transitional President Jalal Talabani said yesterday that his government had agreed to security requests by Sunni Arab delegates who serve on the nation's constitution-drafting committee, an olive branch that could end a Sunni boycott of the charter-writing process. Sunni delegates, who launched a boycott after the killing last week of one of their colleagues and a legal adviser, also indicated they are ready to resume work on the document, which is due to be approved by Aug. 15. The announcements came as new U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalizad arrived in Baghdad.