In Iraq, on April 15, 2003, “the American authorities had helped organize a conference of more than seventy Iraqi notables–exile leaders, tribal sheiks, Kurds and Shiite clerics–in a tent at Tallil Air Base, near Nasiriya, to begin the process of creating a new Iraqi government. …After a daylong session, the group issued a statement outlining thirteen points of agreement toward establishing a ‘federal system’ under leaders chosen by the Iraqi people and not imposed from outside.”
– Todd S. Purdum and The New York Times Staff, A Time of Our Choosing, Pages 241-242