United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the Security Council welcomed on Monday the transfer of power in Iraq and called for reconciliation among all Iraqi political and religious forces.

"The secretary-general welcomes the state of Iraq back into the family of independent and sovereign nations," his spokesman Stephane Dujaric told reporters, hours after the US-led coalition handed over authority to the interim Iraqi government in Baghdad two days ahead of schedule.

Annan "calls upon all Iraqis to come together in a spirit of national unity and reconciliation, through a process of open dialogue and consensus-building, to lay down secure foundations for the new Iraq," said Dujaric.

"Their first duty is to assist their interim government to establish security for the population so that the difficult process of return toward normalcy can commence." Annan is currently on a three-week trip to the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Europe, which started last weekend. The Security Council also issued a statement on the historic power transfer, which ended the 14-month occupation of Iraq. The statement, read to the press by Council President LauroBaja of the Philippines, called on all Iraqis to carry out the political transition plan as endorsed by the council in a resolution early June.

"The members of the council call on all Iraqis to implement these arrangements peaceably and in full," it said. Under the plan, Iraqis would elect a transitional government by January 31 and then a permanent one by the end of 2005 in accordance with the permanent constitution to be drafted by mid-2005.

The council reiterated its call to the international community to support the fledgling new Iraqi government led by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, and condemned, "in the strongest term," the continued violence in Iraq.

Source: Xinhua