IRAQ: The Iraqi National Congress yesterday announced that four mass graves had been found near the industrial town of Hilla, 90kms south of the capital.
Mr Entifa Qanbar, the group's spokesman, said that these sites could contain as many as 15,000 bodies and appealed to the international community to help locate the "hundreds of thousands of Iraqis" who disappeared during the 35 years of Baath Party rule.
At a press conference in the once elegant Hunting Club in the Mansur district of the capital, Mr Qanbar said that his organisation has a three-stage programme of work. During the first stage, an Iraqi provisional government will be built. The five figures chosen during February would be joined by others to form a leadership council.
The five are Mr Ahmad Chalabi of the Iranian National Congress (INC), the Pentagon's choice to head the interim government, Mr Massoud Barzani of the Kurdish Democratic Party, Mr Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Mr Ayad Alawi of the Iraqi National Accord and Mr Abdel Aziz Hakim of the Iran-backed Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
Among the other factions expected to join this body is the Shia Dawa Party.
This council will help select 500 delegates to attend a national convention in June which will choose ministers for the interim government. The INC spokesman could not, however, describe how the representatives would be chosen. "These issues are being discussed right at this moment," he stated.
The second stage is the "de-Baathification" of Iraq. This would involve a ban on the participation of the top three divisions in the Baath party, about 30,000 persons.
Mr Qanbar said that "re-Baathification" should be prohibited. On this issue there could be differences with US administrators who have already appointed former party officials to key posts.
During the third stage, an Iraqi civil society will be created to "build democracy". Mr Qanbar made the point that the INC opposes the emergence of political parties, although the INC itself is a party and the representatives already named to the leadership council are leaders of parties.
He was critical of the US failure to impose law and order and to provide Iraqis with food, electricity, water and other necessities of life.
"Things are moving much slower than the Iraqi people expected," he stated.
The Iraqi Shia Muslim leader Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim said yesterday Iraq needed a broad-based government to avoid a "social explosion", apparently backing away from past calls for an Iranian-style Islamic state.
"I will be working to set up a government which will represent all the people of Iraq, restore security, reconstruct it and take it out of its isolation," said Ayatollah Hakim, who returned from two decades of exile in Iran last week.
"The majority of Iraqi people are Shi'ite. They should have a political role but not to the exclusion of other Iraqi people," he said.