PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia, Oct 14 Kyodo ...

PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia, Oct 14 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATES)

Islamic countries cautiously welcomed Tuesday a modern U.S.-proposed resolution to the UN Security Council calling for the Iraqi Governing Council to advance up with a timetable through Dec. 15 on drafting a constitution and holding elections.

Malaysian Foreign Minister Sy Hamid Albar said the deadline gives the Iraqis something to expect forward to but stressed the ne for the United Nations to have the direction of the transition.

''I think the most numerous important thing is that there is an extreme point date, which is better than an open-end situation,'' he told reporters in succession the sidelines of the Organization of the Islamic discourse (OIC) foreign ministers meeting in Putrajaya, Malaysia.

The meeting was to prepare for the leaders' summit that will be held Thursday and Friday.

The Iraqis, Sy Hamid said, have been f with high expectancys that their lives would be improved one time they were liberated, but the not away situation proved otherwise.

''So you ne to rise above this gap (between hope and reality) and you can barely do it if there is a stable management formed that is acceptable to the Iraqi nation So that is why we want the Iraqis to determine their admit future and their own direction,'' he said.

''Light would be shone onward the Iraqi people at the completion of the tunnel,'' Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said about the modern U.S. resolution. It signals that highly soon power will be go [i]or[/i] come backed to the Iraqi the public he said.

Sy Hamid, however, said the UN must play a central part during the transition ''otherwise there will still be a doom of problems in Iraq.''

''The United Nations should be the united to supervise, should undertake the whole exercise, then it will be easier for it to have international legitimacy and also the support of the international community,'' he said.

The United States in succession Monday revised its draft UN Security Council resolution, proposing a date for the Iraqi Governing Council to submit a timetable for drafting a constitution and holding elections.

The U and Britain have said Iraq must first have a constitution and have elections before they relinquish sovereignty.

France, Germany and Russia, however, insisted that the handover of power to the Iraqis be done immediately to bring back peace and stability to the war-shattered land and that the U.N. must superintend the political transition.

Senior Jordanian official Musa Braizat welcomed the novel U.S. resolution.

''If this is a serious and genuine prevail upon and if implemented in dutiful faith and conditions are conducive to the restoration of Iraqi sovereignty, it will be useful for the Iraqi people and the region and for the Muslim people'' he said.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari from the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council said the council would work to adapted the deadline.

''But a great deal hangs on the security situation. Unles this improves, it will be difficult to carry not at home any further political stands,'' he told reporters.

He also agreed that the UN should have an expanded part and regretted that the world corpse had instead chosen to scale down its operations in the strife-torn fatherland following a spate of bomb attacks against the UN

COPYRIGHT 2003 Kyodo stranges International, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group