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American Morning

Analysis With Ken Pollack

Aired December 25, 2003 - 09:04   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: From the fall of Baghdad to the capture of Saddam Hussein, it's been a tumultuous year in Iraq. What lies ahead for the country? Who will lead the country in six months or even a year from now?
Our analyst, Ken Pollack, is just back from Iraq, and earlier, I spoke with him, and I started by asking him to look into his crystal ball and tell me if the planned July 1 handover would go smoothly.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KEN POLLACK, CNN ANALYST: The hope is that, by the July 1 turn over, the U.S. and the Iraqis will have stood up a new Iraqi interim assembly, which will not be quite fully representational and legitimate in the sense that it won't be through direct elections hopefully, but it should be much more legitimate and more representative of the Iraqi people than the current governing council.

They've created a very complicated mechanism that's hopefully going to produce a new group of people that will look much more like the composition of Iraq and that Iraqis will feel really stand for what they believe in.

O'BRIEN: Are you confident about the July 1 date, that that's going to work, that handover?

POLLACK: There are a lot of problems on the road between now and then. I think that this is a plan that can work. It's actually a very clever system that Paul Bremer and his team have come up, but there are a lot of obstacles on the way, not least of them the fact that you're going to have to negotiate with the current governing council, which is supposed to get put out of business by this new assembly.

O'BRIEN: Many of them don't want to be out of business.

POLLACK: Exactly. Many of them want to stick around and get grandfathered into this new assembly, and they're the ones we're trying to negotiate with over how that new organization comes into being.

O'BRIEN: Another big obstacle, of course, is the Grand Ayatollah al Sistani, who wants general elections. He doesn't want sort of just what you've described. How do you combat that problem?

POLLACK: Well, what we've heard -- both I and the folks inside the U.S. government have been hearing from any number of Sistani's aids -- is that Sistani is flexible on this position.

And really what he wants is he wants to make sure that the United States is not going to simply designate someone to rule Iraq. In particular, what he's afraid of is that we will designate Ahmed Chalabi, who, of course, is a favorite in the Pentagon, but deeply unpopular in Iraq.

And so what those folks are saying is, if you're willing to make some compromises and assure the grand ayatollah that you're not just going to put Ahmed Chalabi in power, he's willing to compromise too.

O'BRIEN: What do you see happening to him if he doesn't get put into power?

POLLACK: Well, Ahmed Chalabi is unlikely to go gently into that good night.

O'BRIEN: He's doing his own negotiations behind the scenes all the time?

POLLACK: Absolutely. Yes, he is constantly politicking. He has been working overtime to try to undermine this deal, because he knows that, under this new deal, he'll actually have to get himself elected to an Iraqi assembly, and he knows he's deeply unpopular there.

O'BRIEN: All right. Let's talk a little bit about this interim government drafting a constitution, and I want to go through some of the provisions that you think should actually be or must actually be in a worthwhile constitution.

First of all, you say there needs to be a bill of rights.

POLLACK: Something like that. It doesn't necessarily have to be exactly like our Bill of Rights. But the problem, of course, in Iraq is that, for roughly 100 years, you've had a Sunni minority that has been suppressing a Shia majority, and there are a lot of people in Iraq who are very nervous about this situation, that whoever comes to power will get control of the central government and oppress other groups, just like the way the Sunnis did with the Shia.

So what you need is you need something that guarantees rule of law so that every Iraqi knows that no one will be able to grab control of the central government and be able to oppress individuals the way the Sunnis did to the Shia for so long.

O'BRIEN: A bill of rights would do that, also some kind of system of checks and balances as well?

POLLACK: Right. That's kind of the addendum to the system -- to the bill of rights. You also want a system that makes sure that the government itself can't be taken over, so that one group can't grab control of the army or grab control of the presidency or the parliament and just use its power over that group to impose its will on people, do things to them that shouldn't be done in a democracy.

O'BRIEN: And yet, in two of the last things on your options for the Iraqi constitution, to me, seem to be the biggest hurdles: geographic representation and ethnicity requirement. I mean, to some degree, these two issues are at the heart of so many of the problems and issues in Iraq.

POLLACK: Sure. What we've seen is that there are two different, basic systems of government around the world where democracy is concerned.

One is proportional representation, where you just vote for a party slate. In Iraq, that would probably be disastrous, because all the Shia would vote for a Shia party, all the Sunnis would vote for a Sunni party. And what you see in all these kinds of systems is it reinforces the extremists in a party.

Look at a place like Israel, where just voting for Likud produces kind of extreme politicians. Just voting for labor produces extreme -- what you want are moderate people in the center.

And strangely enough, our system of geographic representation does exactly that, because you've got these mixed geographic entities, places where people from whole different ethnic groups, all kinds of different religious groups, they mingle, and they will represent or they will pick representatives who represent all of their interests.

It's why, in the United States, everyone talks about how, at election time, the Democratic and Republican parties become almost intermingled. They become identical to each other because everyone's competing for that middle ground.

In Iraq, that's a really good thing, and that's the kind of thing you want to see happen there.

O'BRIEN: Final question about the Iraqi governing council -- we hear a lot about them as a group, but if they're not grandfathered into the new government, it's going to be a problem for them. Do you see any sticking out as two who could -- or two or three or a handful that could be sort of the rising stars of the group?

POLLACK: Sure. I think there are a number of personalities among the current governing council who are some really remarkable people. I'll mention two, Mowaffak al-Rubbaie, who is of mixed Sunni and Shia descent. He is a doctor by training. He is a very bright, well-educated man, who is going out there and building a constituency, a very large constituency among the Iraqi people, among both Sunnis and Shia. He's someone to watch.

Another one is a Shia by the name of Ibrahim al-Jaafari. Al- Jaafari belongs to the Dawa party, which was, at one point in time, a rather extreme Shia group that fought Saddam Hussein, mounted assassination attempts against his main flunkies, his main henchmen in the early 1980s, and Dawa has come a long way since then. And al- Jaafari himself is very charismatic. He's very bright, and he's also building a very large representative base among the Shia. He's someone that a lot of Iraqis are looking to and saying, if we've got to have a Shia as president, he's the guy we want.

O'BRIEN: A look into the future -- Ken Pollack, our CNN analyst. Nice to see you, as always. Thanks.

POLLACK: Thank you, Soledad. Merry Christmas.

O'BRIEN: And likewise.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com






Aired December 25, 2003 - 09:04   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: From the fall of Baghdad to the capture of Saddam Hussein, it's been a tumultuous year in Iraq. What lies ahead for the country? Who will lead the country in six months or even a year from now?
Our analyst, Ken Pollack, is just back from Iraq, and earlier, I spoke with him, and I started by asking him to look into his crystal ball and tell me if the planned July 1 handover would go smoothly.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KEN POLLACK, CNN ANALYST: The hope is that, by the July 1 turn over, the U.S. and the Iraqis will have stood up a new Iraqi interim assembly, which will not be quite fully representational and legitimate in the sense that it won't be through direct elections hopefully, but it should be much more legitimate and more representative of the Iraqi people than the current governing council.

They've created a very complicated mechanism that's hopefully going to produce a new group of people that will look much more like the composition of Iraq and that Iraqis will feel really stand for what they believe in.

O'BRIEN: Are you confident about the July 1 date, that that's going to work, that handover?

POLLACK: There are a lot of problems on the road between now and then. I think that this is a plan that can work. It's actually a very clever system that Paul Bremer and his team have come up, but there are a lot of obstacles on the way, not least of them the fact that you're going to have to negotiate with the current governing council, which is supposed to get put out of business by this new assembly.

O'BRIEN: Many of them don't want to be out of business.

POLLACK: Exactly. Many of them want to stick around and get grandfathered into this new assembly, and they're the ones we're trying to negotiate with over how that new organization comes into being.

O'BRIEN: Another big obstacle, of course, is the Grand Ayatollah al Sistani, who wants general elections. He doesn't want sort of just what you've described. How do you combat that problem?

POLLACK: Well, what we've heard -- both I and the folks inside the U.S. government have been hearing from any number of Sistani's aids -- is that Sistani is flexible on this position.

And really what he wants is he wants to make sure that the United States is not going to simply designate someone to rule Iraq. In particular, what he's afraid of is that we will designate Ahmed Chalabi, who, of course, is a favorite in the Pentagon, but deeply unpopular in Iraq.

And so what those folks are saying is, if you're willing to make some compromises and assure the grand ayatollah that you're not just going to put Ahmed Chalabi in power, he's willing to compromise too.

O'BRIEN: What do you see happening to him if he doesn't get put into power?

POLLACK: Well, Ahmed Chalabi is unlikely to go gently into that good night.

O'BRIEN: He's doing his own negotiations behind the scenes all the time?

POLLACK: Absolutely. Yes, he is constantly politicking. He has been working overtime to try to undermine this deal, because he knows that, under this new deal, he'll actually have to get himself elected to an Iraqi assembly, and he knows he's deeply unpopular there.

O'BRIEN: All right. Let's talk a little bit about this interim government drafting a constitution, and I want to go through some of the provisions that you think should actually be or must actually be in a worthwhile constitution.

First of all, you say there needs to be a bill of rights.

POLLACK: Something like that. It doesn't necessarily have to be exactly like our Bill of Rights. But the problem, of course, in Iraq is that, for roughly 100 years, you've had a Sunni minority that has been suppressing a Shia majority, and there are a lot of people in Iraq who are very nervous about this situation, that whoever comes to power will get control of the central government and oppress other groups, just like the way the Sunnis did with the Shia.

So what you need is you need something that guarantees rule of law so that every Iraqi knows that no one will be able to grab control of the central government and be able to oppress individuals the way the Sunnis did to the Shia for so long.

O'BRIEN: A bill of rights would do that, also some kind of system of checks and balances as well?

POLLACK: Right. That's kind of the addendum to the system -- to the bill of rights. You also want a system that makes sure that the government itself can't be taken over, so that one group can't grab control of the army or grab control of the presidency or the parliament and just use its power over that group to impose its will on people, do things to them that shouldn't be done in a democracy.

O'BRIEN: And yet, in two of the last things on your options for the Iraqi constitution, to me, seem to be the biggest hurdles: geographic representation and ethnicity requirement. I mean, to some degree, these two issues are at the heart of so many of the problems and issues in Iraq.

POLLACK: Sure. What we've seen is that there are two different, basic systems of government around the world where democracy is concerned.

One is proportional representation, where you just vote for a party slate. In Iraq, that would probably be disastrous, because all the Shia would vote for a Shia party, all the Sunnis would vote for a Sunni party. And what you see in all these kinds of systems is it reinforces the extremists in a party.

Look at a place like Israel, where just voting for Likud produces kind of extreme politicians. Just voting for labor produces extreme -- what you want are moderate people in the center.

And strangely enough, our system of geographic representation does exactly that, because you've got these mixed geographic entities, places where people from whole different ethnic groups, all kinds of different religious groups, they mingle, and they will represent or they will pick representatives who represent all of their interests.

It's why, in the United States, everyone talks about how, at election time, the Democratic and Republican parties become almost intermingled. They become identical to each other because everyone's competing for that middle ground.

In Iraq, that's a really good thing, and that's the kind of thing you want to see happen there.

O'BRIEN: Final question about the Iraqi governing council -- we hear a lot about them as a group, but if they're not grandfathered into the new government, it's going to be a problem for them. Do you see any sticking out as two who could -- or two or three or a handful that could be sort of the rising stars of the group?

POLLACK: Sure. I think there are a number of personalities among the current governing council who are some really remarkable people. I'll mention two, Mowaffak al-Rubbaie, who is of mixed Sunni and Shia descent. He is a doctor by training. He is a very bright, well-educated man, who is going out there and building a constituency, a very large constituency among the Iraqi people, among both Sunnis and Shia. He's someone to watch.

Another one is a Shia by the name of Ibrahim al-Jaafari. Al- Jaafari belongs to the Dawa party, which was, at one point in time, a rather extreme Shia group that fought Saddam Hussein, mounted assassination attempts against his main flunkies, his main henchmen in the early 1980s, and Dawa has come a long way since then. And al- Jaafari himself is very charismatic. He's very bright, and he's also building a very large representative base among the Shia. He's someone that a lot of Iraqis are looking to and saying, if we've got to have a Shia as president, he's the guy we want.

O'BRIEN: A look into the future -- Ken Pollack, our CNN analyst. Nice to see you, as always. Thanks.

POLLACK: Thank you, Soledad. Merry Christmas.

O'BRIEN: And likewise.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com