Iraq breaks with past as new flag is raised

BAGHDAD-Iraq's temporary new national flag was raised over the country's parliament for the first time on Tuesday, trumpeted by the government as a break with the past and a step towards reconciliation.In another symbolic move, the government said it had started to rebuild a revered Shi'ite shrine which was bombed two years ago, sparking sectarian violence which killed tens of thousands of Iraqis and took the country to the brink of civil war.Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki presided over the flag-raising outside his offices in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone in a ceremony watched by cabinet members and dignitaries.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."It erases the impact of the past," Maliki said. The flag will fly for a year before a permanent replacement is chosen. Kurdish officials had refused to fly the old flag, introduced after the coup by Saddam's Baath party in 1963, and it was banned in largely autonomous northern Kurdistan.Some ordinary Iraqis were far from impressed.Officials in Falluja in western Anbar province, once a Sunni Arab insurgent stronghold, said they would not fly it unless ordered to do so."I think that parliament and the government will gain the hatred of the people against it," Falluja Mayor Saad Rasheed told Reuters.

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As in the days of Noah.....