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world
Shiites gain political control of Iraq, will dominate assembly
BAGHDAD, Iraq – A Shiite Muslim cleric-led political ticket with close ties to Iran swept Iraq’s national elections in final results announced Sunday.
By winning almost 50 percent of the popular vote, which will give it more than half of the seats in the Iraqi national assembly, the United Iraqi Alliance will almost certainly take the nation’s prime minister post and have a dominant hand in drafting the constitution.
The tally confirmed what the initial results suggested that Iraq’s majority Shiite population had wrested control of the Iraqi government from the minority Sunnis for the first time in decades.
The new government likely will take control within days, but Iraq’s disposition toward the U.S. military presence is unlikely to change any time soon.
Spokesmen for both the Dawa party and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the two main parties in the Alliance, said they had no plans to call for a U.S. troop withdrawal.
“We reject the occupation but we won’t ask them (the multinational forces) to pull out until the security situation improves and the Iraqi house can stand on its feet,” said Hadi al-Jaburi, a Supreme Council spokesman.
Officials from both parties also said that though they want Islam to be the main source of the national constitution, they will ensure that the document is inclusive of various sects and ethnicities.
national
Speculation over Rice’s future has GOP abuzz
WASHINGTON – President Condi?
Political speculation starts earlier and earlier these days, but it’s particularly strong now as President Bush starts his second term without the usual clear successor.
Condoleezza Rice – one of Bush’s most trusted advisers and now as newly minted secretary of state, arguably the most powerful woman in the world – is setting GOP hearts aflutter in the wake of her boffo first foreign trip.
Already, many are starting to dream of a Condi Rice-Hillary Clinton smackdown in `08.
“That’s how we get our jollies in this town,” said Stephen Hess, senior presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution.
Rice’s whirlwind trip last week to Europe and the Middle East, where she attempted to mend fences with the French and Germans and reached out to the Palestinians, made her an instant international star.
Continental columnists gushed over her “impeccable grooming,” with the French newspaper, Liberation, commenting that she dresses the way she negotiates – “seductive, but also no-nonsense.”
“When has the United States been represented by a very attractive, very articulate, very forceful black woman?” Hess asked. “And when the other fellow looks like (Jacques) Chirac or (Ariel) Sharon, wow, who are you going to look at? This is visual dynamite.”
There are at least two Draft-Rice groups, one of which recently set itself up as a 527 group to accept donations and says it has an organizer in all 50 states.
King memorial group vows slow fund-raising will meet expectations
WASHINGTON – Backers of a memorial on the Washington Mall to civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. say they are on track to complete the project despite raising just one sixth of their fund-raising goal during the past year.
Harry E. Johnson Sr., the St. Louis native who is president of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation, told the Post-Dispatch last February that the foundation would raise $30 million during calendar 2004.
Foundation records show that donations since have totaled just $5.5 million. The foundation has raised $34.5 million, total, since Congress authorized the project in 1996.
Under the initial legislation the foundation was given seven years to raise $67 million, at which point ground-breaking could begin on what would be the last major memorial on the Mall. Total project costs are estimated at $100 million.
In late 2003 Congress granted a two-year extension on fund-raising, until November 2006.
“We are still on track to complete this memorial,” said Johnson, who left St. Louis after graduate school and now practices law in Houston. He said the fund-raising had fallen short last year because the foundation “was going through its quiet phase.” He predicted dramatic results this year.
Johnson also said progress on the King memorial compares favorably with that for the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial and the World War II Memorial, two recent additions to the Mall.
“We are on schedule,” Johnson said. “Compared to the other two memorials,” he added, “we are ahead of schedule.”
World/National/What the? stories courtesy of KRT Campus Wire Services unless otherwise credited. Local/BSU stories are courtesy of the Boise State Web site at www.boisestate.edu. All stories are compiled by News Writers.