Naseer Al-Nahr, Arab News

BAGHDAD, 4 June 2004 — Iraq’s top Shiite leader yesterday gave cautious backing to the new interim government as seven more civilians died in continuing violence.

Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Husseini Al-Sistani issued a statement yesterday implicitly endorsing the new interim Iraqi government and urging it to lobby with the UN Security Council for genuine sovereignty to remove “all traces” of the occupation.

Al-Sistani noted that the new government, appointed Tuesday by a UN envoy, lacks the “legitimacy of elections” and does not represent “in an acceptable manner all segments of Iraqi society and political forces.”

“Nevertheless, it is hoped that this government will prove its efficiency and integrity and show resolve to carry out the enormous tasks that rest on its shoulders,” Al-Sistani said in a statement released by his office here.

Russia said it still had reservations about a draft UN Security Council resolution on the future of Iraq presented by the United States and Britain. But China welcomed changes made to the draft and urged the Council to reach a consensus on the document as soon as possible.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell said the new government will have no veto over future military operations by American-led forces after the US-British occupation formally ends on June 30.

Powell said the interim government would be fully sovereign and able to reach agreements with Washington on how Iraqi and US-led forces would operate after the handover. “There could be a situation where we have to act and there may be a disagreement, and we have to act to protect ourselves or to accomplish a mission,” Powell told Dubai-based Middle East Broadcasting Center in an interview aired late Wednesday.

His remarks again appeared at odds with British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s contention last week that the Iraqi government would be able to veto operations such as the US assault on insurgents in Fallujah in April.

Meanwhile, Iraq’s new president said in comments published yesterday that the interim government could bring back former members of Saddam Hussein’s defunct Baath Party as long as they have no blood on their hands.

In an interview with respected Iraqi newspaper Al-Mada, President Ghazi Yawar said Iraq needed the expertise of some former regime members to help rebuild the country and bring together different social, ethnic and religious groups.

Paul Bremer, the US administrator of Iraq, last year banned all but the most junior Baath Party members from having any role in postwar Iraq after he initiated a policy of “de-Baathification” to rid the country of its vestiges.

In the central Shiite town of Kufa, five civilians were killed and 15 civilians wounded in clashes between militiamen loyal to radical leader Moqtada Sadr and US troops, medics said.

And two Iraqis were killed in Baghdad when mortar shells exploded near the Italian Embassy, police said.

The US military said the clashes in Kufa broke out as troops were conducting a search in a school suspected of having been used by members of Sadr’s Mehdi Army to launch mortar attacks.

— Additional input from agencies