Iraq's interim PM signs emergency security law

Iraq’s interim prime minister has signed a long-anticipated law that gives him the authority to impose emergency measures to safeguard the country’s security, an official in his office said today.

Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and his government have delayed the announcement of the law designed to combat Iraq’s violent insurgency on several occasions. A news conference to announce the final draft of the law is set for later today.

The new law signed by Mr Allawi gives Iraqi officials the right to impose martial law in special circumstances and for limited periods of time in specific places, said Nassir Nassir, an official in the Prime Minister’s office. The law has been signed and approved by the government, he said.

The law is expected to be a package of initiatives to combat the insurgency.

On Saturday, Mr Allawi’s spokesman, Georges Sada, suggested that guerrillas who fought the coalition before the sovereignty transfer could be eligible for amnesty because their actions were legitimate acts of resistance.

But the deputy minister for national security, Barham Saleh, said the cabinet was discussing an amnesty offer and was deliberating how to give “people an opportunity to reintegrate within society” while at the same time “remaining firm against people who have committed atrocities and have committed crimes against the people of Iraq and against the coalition forces that have come to help us overcome tyranny”.

But officials declined to release a copy of the law before the news conference, and its final details were not immediately clear.