Iraqis Quietly Take Power After Bremer's Early Exit
BAGHDAD — An interim Iraqi government took power Monday after a furtive ceremony meant to preempt insurgent attacks that could have disrupted the hand-over.
It was an inauguration on the run. After transferring authority, U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer III left for the airport.
Iraqi and Coalition Provisional Authority leaders attended a makeshift morning ceremony in the U.S.-controlled Green Zone two days before the hand-over was to take place. A small coterie of foreign and Iraqi reporters was summoned with 30 minutes' notice.
Ministers of a caretaker government with limited powers were sworn in nearly five hours later, after Bremer had departed the country on a C-130 transport plane.
U.S. Ambassador John D. Negroponte, who will head a massive embassy here, arrived after nightfall and was to present his credentials to the new government soon.
Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, little-known to most Iraqis after spending more than three decades in exile, took the oath of office on a red Koran and urged his countrymen to close ranks to defeat a fierce insurrection responsible for a spree of kidnappings, assassinations, car bombings and beheadings.
On Monday, Iraq seemed to have been spared a major attack like those that have recently gripped this nation. But after nightfall, Al Jazeera satellite television reported that militants had killed a U.S. soldier held hostage since early April.
The dead man was identified as Pfc. Keith M. Maupin, of Batavia, Ohio, who had been missing since an ambush on a convoy west of Baghdad on April 9. The U.S. military said it could not immediately confirm whether Maupin was the man shown being shot in a grainy videotape.
Lethal violence had escalated in the days before the hand-over. Militants recently captured five hostages -- three Turks, a Pakistani contractor and a U.S. Marine -- and threatened to kill them unless their demands were met. The group holding the Turks is headed by Jordanian-born fugitive Abu Musab Zarqawi, who has links to Al Qaeda.
On the day sovereignty was transferred, Britain's Defense Ministry said a soldier from Glasgow, Scotland, was killed by a bomb in Basra.
In his televised inaugural address, Allawi called on his people to "stand united to expel the foreign terrorists who are killing our children and destroying our country."
