Baghdad waits for new rulers coming from afar

Divisions among senior officials at the United States administration on the future of post-war Iraq came to the fore Wednesday as talks about appointments of Americans slated to run Iraq surfaced.

Even though the shape of the American stay in Iraq after the war has not been finalized yet, reports talked about the appointment of an American "civil" ruler administering Iraq for an interim period.

Jay Garner, 64, a retired Lt. General who has a history of belittling Palestinian peace ambitions and is connected with rightwing Zionists through the lobby Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, is slated to run Iraq.

In a news conference on Tuesday, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters that Garner "was picked by Secretary (of Defense Donald) Rumsfeld as part of the team that the Secretary has assembled that is working in coordination with other offices in the US government, including (US American International Development) USAID and State, on the reconstruction of Iraq."

When asked whether Iraqis would trust Garner, who in 1997 became president of SY Technology - a Virginia provider of communications and targeting systems for missiles, Fleischer answered that given "the fact that the appointment is Secretary Rumsfeld's, you might want to talk to the Secretary.

"That's a (Department of Defense) DOD question," he added.

Fleischer did not conceal the divisions on post-conflict Iraq roles saying that while Garner might be appointed governor, officials from the State Department's USAID would also have their tasks. "They all will have a role," he said.

According to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, "The heart of Garner's office (covers) three operations (including) reconstruction, humanitarian, and civil administration, each headed by a civilian coordinator."

Feith highlighted to the Washington Post in an interview in February the importance of security in post-war American rule in Iraq. "Even the stuff that is purely humanitarian can be done effectively only if there's security," he said.

Garner is currently the director of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance for Post-war Iraq at the Defense Department.

But security was not a high priority for Secretary of State Colin Powell who, during an interview with the New York Times on Saturday, said "Our intention is to shift from a military government to more civilians coming into it, so that you show a civilian face to our presence."

When asked about the identity of these civilians, Powell said they would be "Americans and others (in a form of a) coalition" adding, "That's what Jay Garner's group is all about."

He also said that Garner was assembling the groups of people who would help rebuilding the ministries and start building the civil administration. "How do you do that? This is a source of considerable discussion," said Powell.

Meanwhile, Lawmakers in the US appear to have resolved the State-DOD dispute in favor of the State Department. On Tuesday the Republican-controlled joint Congress appropriations committee voted to rid the Pentagon of reconstruction tasks and delegated them instead to Powell.

The committee voted to forward a sum of $2.5 billion to the State Department as post-conflict aid which the American administration had initially sought for the Pentagon under an emergency appropriation.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi opposition seems ready to assume any role that the American "master" might want it to take in post-war Iraq.

By an large, the opposition is divided into three main groups, Kurds, Shiites and independents.

Yet the opposition is far from forming a single front that might succeed in presenting a clear vision to the coming mandating power for the ruling of Iraq.

The opposition is blamed for heavily relying on the Americans whose connection to these Iraqis comes through the US envoy to Iraq Khalil Zalmayzad, the broker of the Afghani Hamid Qarzai regime. Would Iraq become another Afghanistan after the war? Only time would tell.

This is an updated version of Hussain Abdul-Hussain's "US 'civil' official tipped to head Iraq" published earlier in The Daily Star. Printed with permission