The interim Iraqi government has been sworn in in Baghdad following a day of political and military upheaval. The interim president, Mr Ghazi Yawer, was appointed after the Americans' preferred candidate turned down the post.
At around the same time as the swearing-in ceremony took place, a car bomb tore through the nearby offices of a Kurdish political party, killing and wounding several people, underlined the scale of the challenge the interim administration faces in organising Iraq's first free elections in the new year.
Several rockets also landed around the US compound as officials were meeting, wounding one Iraqi. And a suicide car bomber killed 11 Iraqis outside a US base north of Baghdad.
Yawar called for the United Nations to give Iraq "full sovereignty" when the US-led occupation authority is wound up on June 30. But 150,000 foreign soldiers, mostly Americans, are set to stay on for the foreseeable future to provide security.
After two days of bitter confrontation, the United States and UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi finally accepted Yawar in the largely ceremonial role of head of state after their preferred candidate, elder statesman Adnan Pachachi, turned down the job.
But in return the Iraqi Governing Council agreed to dissolve itself with immediate effect and accepted a cabinet line-up under Prime Minister-designate Iyad Allawi that featured many fewer of its own members than it had wanted.
Brahimi, addressing Iraq's new leaders, said it was the "first step on a road that will no doubt be long and difficult" and that Iraqis were looking forward to a fresh start and wanted to put the wars and hardships of the Saddam years behind them.
In a face-saving manoeuvre, the 22-member Governing Council initially dropped its objection to Pachachi. Then, within minutes, the 81-year-old former foreign minister renounced the post and Brahimi declared that Yawar would become head of state.
Officials then announced that the Council, whose members US officials had accused of trying to cling to power by claiming positions in the new government, was being wound up.
"The Governing Council dissolved itself today. It no longer exists," Council member Mahmoud Othman told journalists. Iyad Allawi, the Shi'ite former exile with close links to the CIA whom the Council nominated as prime minister on Friday, then announced a government that included only two other Council members among 26 cabinet ministers and five junior ministers.
After a Sunni cleric chanted a recitation from the Koran offering advice on wise leadership, the new administration was sworn in at a building in the Green Zone compound where Saddam is expected to stand trial for crimes against humanity.