IRAQ - June 1 - Shammar Leader Yawer Becomes President; IGC Dissolved.

PM Allawi and follow IGC members choose their Sunni colleague and current IGC head, Shaikh Ghazi Mishaal Ajil Al Yawer, to the largely ceremonial post of president of the republic. (In this the IGC scores again, this time against both CPA chief Bremer and Brahimi, with the US having preferred Adnan Pachachi for the post. Yawer was born in Mosul. His grandfather is the chief of the huge, preminantly Sunni Arab confederation of tribes called Shammar. Although he was graduated from Georgetown University, Yawer, 45, has said repeatedly he wants to see the US leave Iraq as soon as possible. He holds a Saudi nationality, having studied engineering at the King Fahd University for Petroleum and Mineral Resources in Dhahran. Some Iraqi branches of the Shammar tribes are Shiite). The IGC also chooses Shiite Da'wa Party leader Ibrahim Al-Jaafari as one of the two vice presidents. The other VP is the speaker of parliament in the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq, Rowsch Shaways. At the same time, the IGC dissolves itself, now that most of its members are in the interim government. (But Ahmad Chalabi is among those excluded from the new regime and Pachachi later returned to his family in Abu Dhabi. Among the new government's first tasks is to negotiate a crucial agreement on the status of US-led international forces that will remain in Iraq after sovereignty is restored by June 30 and to tackle the country's tenuous security situation. The new interim cabinet - a PM, a deputy premier for security and 31 ministers who include six women - will take over day-to-day operations of government ministries immediately, although the US-run CPA remains the sole sovereign power in Iraq until June 30. The cabinet draws its membership from Iraq's ethnic, religious and cultural mosaic, bringing together lawyers, politicians, academics, human rights activists, engineers and businessmen from a broad spectrum in contrast to Saddam's Baathist regime which revolved around a Sunni Muslim clique from his hometown of Tikrit. President Bush said the June 1 announcement brought Iraq "one step closer" to democracy but warned against a spike in violence as the date for the restoration of sovereignty drew near. Security remains the primary threat facing the new government, which will rule until national elections by Jan 31. The ceremony introducing the new government took place under tight security in the heavily guarded Green Zone headquarters of the CPA. Heavily armed US troops and Iraqi security forces ringed the two-story building where the ceremony was held. US Army helicopters hovered above and snipers were stationed on the roof. Sniffer dogs searched for bombs. Those present included Bremer, Brahimi, and the top US commander in Iraq Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez. At the welcoming ceremony, Yawer pledged to rise "above sectarianism and divisions" and restore Iraq's "civilised face". Yawer, as the highest-ranking Sunni in the state is likely to hold considerable influence through his elaborate network of contacts among the tribes and clans of Iraq).