Regulator ends state grip on Iraq telecom, media

A Shi’ite politician said appointing such bodies should be left to Iraqis and not imposed on them from outside.

Until Saddam Hussein’s fall nearly a year ago, the Baathist Information ministry ran a state news agency, radio and television, its employees staffed the newspapers and its ‘‘minders’’ kept foreign journalists on a tight rein.

Bremer scrapped the ministry, with the Defence Ministry and armed Forces, in May. He has just set up a new Defence Ministry, but the Information ministry has gone for good. The Communications ministry was equally devoted to the task of control. There was no cell phone network, satellite dishes were banned and few people had access to the internet. Newspapers, magazines and radio stations have mushroomed since the Baathist regime’s demise last April and about 20 television stations have sprung up around the country.

The new regulator’s remit covers both broadcasting and telecoms. ‘‘This is a first for the Arab world,’’ said the CPA adviser. The Commission will have sole responsibility for licensing and regulating telecoms, broadcasting and other media in Iraq, under the order Bremer signed a week ago.

The adviser said Iraq’s US-appointed Governing Council had agreed the body, whose nine-member board has yet to be named, should be independent of a future interim government. A planned June 30 transfer of sovereignty is less than 100 days away, but an interim basic law, or de facto Constitution, passed this month makes it hard for any interim government to tamper with the Commission or its far-reaching prerogatives.

The adviser said the hope was that the Commission would gain such wide Iraqi acceptance that it would survive after a fully elected government takes over by the end of next year. But Hamid al-Bayati, a senior official in the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, questioned that policy. ‘‘Are we going to appoint a judicial system to survive through the transition period? Who is going to guarantee that the Army won’t make a coup?’’

The adviser said the regulator would administer the three licences already granted to mobile phone operators, manage the frequency spectrum and license broadcasters.

Print media may operate without a licence, though the Commission would work with the Iraqi press community to develop a code of ethics.