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Iraq's prime minister symbolically raises
new flag
5.2.2008
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February 5, 2008
Baghdad, -- Iraq's prime minister raised the
country's new temporary national flag over
parliament in a symbolic break with the past on
Tuesday, although many ordinary Iraqis remain
unhappy their old banner has been replaced.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki hoisted the flag
himself over the cabinet building inside central
Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone during a
ceremony watched by leading dignitaries, said the
government's spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh.
Last month, parliament agreed to adopt the new flag,
which is very similar to the old one, in a move long
demanded by the country's Kurdish minority who said
the old banner was a reminder of the brutality of
Saddam Hussein's rule.
Kurdish officials had refused to fly the old flag
which was banned in Iraq's largely autonomous
northern Kurdistan region.
"It will fly across Iraq, in Kurdistan, and from
north to south," Dabbagh said.
However, that may not be the case. Officials in at
least one city, Falluja in western Anbar province
and once a Sunni Arab insurgent stronghold, said
they would not fly the new one.
"This is a disaster ... I am using the old flag in
my office and at home," the mayor of Falluja Saad
Rasheed, told Reuters last month. |
Iraqi Prime minister Jawad Nuri al-Maliki |
Ordinary Iraqis, who saw the old flag as having
little to do with Saddam, a Sunni Arab, have also
been attaching the old flag to their cars in a
silent protest.
The new flag, which has been approved for a year
after which a permanent replacement will be chosen,
looks much like the old one, first flown after
Saddam's coup in 1963.
It is still red, white and black, but three green
stars in the centre representing unity, freedom and
socialism, the motto of Saddam's now outlawed Baath
party, have been removed.
The phrase Allahu Akbar (God is Greatest), added in
green Arabic script on Saddam's orders during the
1991 Gulf War, remains, but since his downfall it
has no longer been in his handwriting.
Reuters
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