US overseer Paul Bremer handed over the keys of the first of Iraq's 25 ministries to the country's interim leadership Sunday in a ceremony aimed at highlighting the gradual hand-over of power by June 30.
"You are in the driver's seat on the road to sovereignty," Bremer told interim health minister Khidr Abbas at the ceremony held less than a fortnight before the first anniversary of the ouster of Saddam Hussein's regime.
Nine doctors, two of them women, in sparkling white coats sat on a stage for the ceremony beneath a streamer bearing the message: "The transfer of power is the first step towards independence and democracy".
"The coalition looks forward to additional ministries achieving full authority in the weeks and months before June 30," said Bremer during the ceremony at the health ministry, attended by about 100 US and Iraqi officers.
"We want to do everything possible to accelerate Iraq's march to full and responsible sovereignty. So, congratulations... for reaching this milestone on the road to sovereignty," he said.
Bremer hailed the work accomplished at the health ministry since the US-led invasion, noting that polio had been eradicated from the country.
"The country is free of polio," he said, adding that 4.2 million Iraqi children were vaccinated against the disease and that 30 million vaccines were distributed nation-wide.
He said: "240 Iraqi hospitals and more than 1,200 primary health centers are operating and have been since last summer."
The Iraqi health minister said the power transfer was an "historical moment for all the Iraqi people." "It is a first step toward independence and the construction of a free and democratic Iraq... due to the emergence of new values and new ideas, contrary to the dark ones of the former regime," said Abbas.
Bremer said the health ministry's annual budget rose from 16 million dollars under the Saddam regime to 948 million dollars in 2004.
"Health care spending in Iraq has increased to 60 times pre-liberation levels," he said.
Public works minister Nasreen Barwari told AFP on Wednesday that four Iraqi ministries would begin working independently from the US-led coalition on April 1 as part of the transition process.
"The process of transferring sovereignty will start at the end of the month with the transfer of power to four ministries: those of education, health, water resources and public works," she said.
"On the first of April, these ministries will be sovereign," she said, adding that while coalition advisers would remain in place in those ministries, they would be in future be subject to their interim ministers.
Since US-led forces deposed Saddam's regime last April, foreign coalition advisers have been at the helm of the cabinets of the interim government.
"The coalition advisors will remain at the ministries, but they would then be under the authority of the (Iraqi) minister," said Barwari.
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