A rchive Date
[ 21-04-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Iraq ]
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[http://www.msnbc.com/news/900178.asp?0sl=-10
Civil administrator arrives in Baghdad
Retired U.S. general to establish interim Iraqi government
NBC, MSNBC AND NEWS SERVICES
BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 21 — Retired U.S. Lt. Gen. Jay Garner arrived Monday to take up his duties as Iraq’s postwar civil administrator in a Baghdad still largely without power, clean water or a clear direction toward a new political future.
GARNER LANDED at the former Saddam International Airport after a short flight from Kuwait, 12 days after U.S. tanks and troops secured the Iraqi capital and brought down Saddam Hussein’s government. With Baghdad slowly returning to normal after days of looting and arson, Marines pulled back Sunday and left the U.S. Army in control of the capital, where coalition-run radio announced an 11 p.m.-6 a.m. curfew.
“What better day in your life can you have than to be able to help somebody else, to help other people, and that is what we intend to do,” Garner said upon arrival. The 64-year-old former general, after weeks of preparatory work in Kuwait, came to his new post under tight security and gave little information about planned meetings or travels.
From the airport, he visited Baghdad’s 1,000-bed Yarmuk hospital, which was overwhelmed with Iraqi casualties in the final days of the war. Its wards, including the coronary and respiratory care units, were then stripped of almost everything by looters. Garner arrived with about 20 top aides, including his British deputy, Maj. Gen. Tim Cross. His staff is to grow to about 450 over the next week as others arrive by overland convoy from Kuwait to set up the full Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Aid
IMMEDIATE NEEDS
The ORHA is to coordinate delivery of outside assistance to the 24 million Iraqis; oversee rebuilding of the nation’s infrastructure, in disrepair from a decade of U.N. sanctions, neglect by Saddam’s regime and three weeks of U.S. bombing; and oversee the establishment of an interim Iraqi government.
For ordinary Iraqis, however, the first needs are for water and electricity - knocked out during the war - and, especially, for security in a city wracked by almost two weeks of looting.
“We’ve got a chaotic situation in Baghdad,” Adnan Said Youssef, 50, said as he arrived for Easter Mass at a Baghdad church. “The Americans have to take control and end this instability.” Garner said his priority was to restore basic services such as water and electricity as soon as possible. Garner, who will report to Central Command chief Gen. Tommy Franks, said he intended to complete his work and leave as soon as possible, but declined to give a timeframe. “We will be here as long as it takes. We will leave fairly rapidly,” he said.
‘FIVE YEARS TO DEMOCRACY’
The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard Lugar, R-Ind., told NBC News Sunday that the timetable for building a working democracy in Iraq would be at least five years. Lugar said the Bush administration started to work very late on a system to replace the rule of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, ousted with an invasion and war. The military plan’s “tactics and execution have been brilliant,” Lugar said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Similar preparations should have been made for what was to come afterward, he said.
“I would think, at least, we ought to be thinking of a period of five years of time” to develop democracy, Lugar said. “Now, that may understate it.” Some talk of four months to five months, he said, which would amount to “trying to do it on the fly, as we have attempted, unfortunately,” would not work.
Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh agreed that an extended American military presence in Iraq will be necessary. “We’re going to have to be there for a while — not permanently, but for a while, because we don’t want to win the war and then lose the peace,” he told “Fox News Sunday.” Nevertheless, Bayh said he sees movement. “We’ll have to maintain a significant presence ... early on until things truly get settled down,” said Bayh, D-Ind., a member of the Senate Intelligence and Armed Forces committees. “There’s some momentum toward a civil society in Iraq. And then hopefully we can begin to ratchet that back.”
The lawmakers’ comments seemed to be at odds with assessments by other Western officials working on the reconstruction of Iraq, who said last week that an interim authority in Baghdad could take over most government functions from the U.S. military in only a few weeks.
CHALABI TIMETABLE
Iraqi opposition leader Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress, the most prominent of a quarrelsome collection of exile groups that formed in opposition to the government of deposed President Saddam Hussein, said the first stage would be “reconstruction of basic services, done by Jay Garner.” “I expect this step to take a few weeks,” he said, with a new constitution and elections two years down the road.
Ultimately, Chalabi said, the U.S. military would have just three functions in Iraq: to eradicate any weapons of mass destruction, to dismantle the ousted regime’s “apparatus of terror” and to disarm the previous regime’s army. “The United States of America does not want to run Iraq,” Chalabi said. “That is the policy of the United States. That’s what President Bush has said, and I believe him.”
CHALABI RULES HIMSELF OUT
Chalabi was vague about how the interim government would be selected, but he reiterated that he was not a candidate to be the leader of Iraq. “I am a citizen of Iraq, and I am home, and I am expressing my views as a citizen of Iraq,” he said. As the head of the Iraqi National Congress, which is based in London, Chalabi had been touted by some as a possible political leader in a new government. However, he is a controversial figure in opposition circles, in part because of financial scandals in his past, and he is little-known within Iraq after decades in exile.
Asked whether the United Nations should play a political role in the new Iraq, Chalabi cited the lack of U.N. support for the invasion to topple Saddam and said, “I don’t think the United Nations is capable in Iraq to play a major role.” Chalabi, a member of a prominent southern Shiite family who has lived outside Iraq since 1958, arrived in Baghdad on Wednesday and established a headquarters at neighboring social clubs in the affluent al-Mansour district. The properties are under close guard by both U.S. armored units and members of the new Free Iraqi Forces, a militia-like contingent sponsored by the Iraqi National Congress that entered Baghdad for the first time in recent days.
BAGHDAD PROTEST
Large protests have made it clear that many Iraqis want the United States out of the country as soon as possible. In the biggest protest since U.S. forces toppled Saddam nine days ago, tens of thousands of Muslims poured out of mosques and into the streets of Baghdad on Friday, calling for an Islamic state to be established.
“No to America! No to Saddam!,” they shouted as they called for unity among Iraq’s Sunni Muslims, Shiite Muslims and Kurds. Some carried banners in Arabic and English. “Leave our country. We want peace,” one of them read.
Inside a mosque, Sheikh Ahmed al-Kubeisy addressed his remarks to Americans. “You are masters today,” he said. “But I warn you against thinking of staying. Get out before we force you out.” Leaders of the oil-rich nation’s neighbors meeting also called for a speedy U.S. departure during a meeting in Saudi Arabia.
Foreign ministers from the countries, all of which except Syria and Iran were key U.S. allies that offered some form of support for the invasion last month, called on the United Nations to take a central role in rebuilding the country. They said they feared that the United States would install a puppet regime in Iraq that would ally itself with Israel.
“American forces are occupation forces. Even the Americans and British have said that,” the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, said at a closing news conference Saturday. “They cannot fulfill their obligations according to the Geneva Convention unless they are called what they are.”
BUILDING A NEW ECONOMY
With no trace of Saddam’s government to be found, the United States is focused on kick-starting Iraq’s shattered economy, which has been devastated by three wars in 23 years and economic sanctions since 1990. U.S. officials said the United Nations must lift sanctions within weeks to help the country recover, but Prince Saud said Saturday that U.N. sanctions should not end until the country had a legitimate government.
The U.S. officials, briefing Reuters in Kuwait on condition of anonymity, said the United States would open Iraq’s borders to tariff-free trade for 90 days once the embargo was lifted. They also predicted that Iraq could not rely on using its oil revenues for about a year until it sorted out war reparation claims and its debt, which has been estimated at more than $100 billion.
For residents, the concerns were more immediate. U.S. forces struggled to restore power to the city of roughly 5 million people, who have been without electricity for two weeks.
“Without power, there is no peace,” said Haifa Aziz, the manager of a power substation. “For hospitals, for schools, for the people, they need electricity.”
A U.S. Marine spokesman said Friday that electricity was expected to be restored to most areas “in the next couple of days.”
NBC’s Mike Taibbi in Baghdad, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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