INTERNATIONAL CALL FOR AN INDEPENDENT ASSEMBLY OF THE IRAQI PEOPLE

AS the occupation of Iraq enters its second year, the demands of the Iraqis grow clearer every day: an immediate end to the Occupation and free elections - free for all Iraqis to participate and free of US interference.

In the present situation, Iraqis are hostage to the Occupying Forces. They are unable to meet and organize freely and they are denied the right to shape their own future. Furthermore, the political transition process proposed by the US administration is designed to install a tame regime, friendly to US interests and their continued presence inside Iraq.

We - the undersigned activists for peace, religious leaders, intellectuals and academics, writers and journalists, parliamentarians, trade unionists and citizens — insist on the right of the Iraqis to be free of occupation and free to decide the course of their own history.

We support the call for free elections: free for all Iraqis to participate and free from interference of the Occupying Forces.

We support the call of the Jakarta Peace Consensus - which was affirmed at the European Social Forum in Paris in 2003 and at the Anti-War Assembly at the World Social Forum in Mumbai in 2004 — for an urgent and independent Assembly of Iraqis, where all sectors of Iraqi society can freely debate and propose the future shape of their State, completely free of interference from the Occupying Forces. This can be the start of a process of building the New Iraq, and a vital first step towards free elections, democracy and sovereignty.

This Assembly must be held in Iraq. However, if this possibility is denied by the Occupying Forces, a Preparatory Conference must be convened outside Iraq.

We guarantee all our efforts to protect the integrity and openness of such a meeting through our support and presence.

We demand an end to the Occupation and we support the Iraqi peoples right to sovereignty and self-determination.

(to sign on to this statement, go to this link: http://www.focusweb.org/int-call/ )