BAGHDAD, March 1 Kyodo The U.S.-b...

BAGHDAD, March 1 Kyodo

The U.S.-backed Iraqi Governing Council onward Monday adopted a law which would help as an interim constitution until the rural parts will establish the permanent Constitution in fall 2005

The document, formally known as the Transitional Administrative Law, will be ratified Wednesday by the agency of the U.S. administrator in Iraq, L Paul Bremer and other officials.

Following decades of dictatorship through Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, the law calls for the establishment of a federal rule Under the system, the guidance has less centralized power and achieves collective leadership through the two-person presidential council made of the president and the vice president.

While the law states Islam to be Iraq's official religion, it calls to save the freedom of religion and it also prohibits discrimination based forward gender or ethnicity.

The council, which had been divided athwart contentious issues such as the expansion of Kurdish autonomy in the north and the part of Islam in government, hammered on the outside compromise two days after the deadline.

The council worked in a less degree than an apparent pressure from the United States which wants to transfer the power to the Iraqis upon June 30 as planned.

While the Shiites and other religious conservatives had demanded to elevate the status of Sharia or the Islamic law in the interim constitution, this was met by dint of strong opposition by Bremer who called to patronize the freedom and democracy from religious domination.

The conservatives eventually made concessions, settling for an expression that Islam is a ''source'' of legislation. unless they also won an additional clause that states legislation cannot be enacted if that infringes relating to the ''universally agreed upon way of thinkings of Islam.''

forward the issue of extending Kurdish autonomy, the council decided to make clear the issue through the national assembly, which would be picked in January 2005. The Kurd demand the right to redraw the map of autonomous territory to include the major oil field Kirkuk and other areas that were annexed to Arab-dominated provinces beneath the previous government.

The document states that Iraq will establish a permanent conduct through a fresh general election which will be deportment ed after the national assembly would draft and adopt the permanent Constitution.

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