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Bremer Defends Iraq Action
By Charles Clover Baghdad The Financial Times http://www.ft.com/ Monday June 2, 2003
Paul Bremer, the chief US administrator in Iraq, on Monday defended the decision to abandon plans for a 300-plus national conference in July, saying it had been taken in order to speed up the formation of an Iraqi interim authority. The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Baghdad announced on Sunday that rather than holding a "big tent" meeting, along the lines of the loya jirga that elected Hamid Karzai transitional leader in Afghanistan, it would instead appoint a 25-30 member political council, to advise Iraqi ministries. "Most of the Iraqis we are talking to have been anxious to move ahead rather quickly with the formation of the Iraqi interim authority," Mr Bremer told journalists on Monday, explaining the reason for the shift. "The best way to get that to move ahead was to step up the pace of discussions and get to a deal fairly quickly." The accelerated political process is likely to be welcomed by many Iraqis but the formula is not. Many are suspicious that the coalition is abandoning the idea of conference not because it is too slow and unwieldy but because it may be difficult to control. Under the new formula, the interim authority will be created mainly behind closed doors, in direct negotiations with a small group of Iraqi political leaders - most of whom have been in exile for decades. Particularly suspicious of the new process are Islamist groups who command a great deal of popular support but who fear the coalition is seeking to marginalise them. Amir al-Basri, a spokesman for the Islamist Da'wa party, said on Monday the changes "create the impression that the Americans are not very serious about getting out of interim period and arriving at an Iraqi sovereign government". The biggest supporters of the new model appear, by contrast, to be the moderate, democratic groups that lack large constituencies in Iraq but enjoy close ties to the US and UK administrations. Dr Mehdi Hafez, vice-president of the Independent Democratic party, led by formerly exiled Iraqi political leader Adnan Pachachi, said his party supported the new coalition model. "We were not eager to have the national conference because we had the same concerns as the coalition about impracticality," he said. In effect, the political council is likely to be an expanded version of a leadership council agreed at an opposition meeting in February in northern Iraq. But CPA officials say their main goal in naming members will be to include leaders from inside the country. The council, expected to be formed in five to six weeks, according to Mr Bremer, will gradually take control of Iraq's ministries, currently being run by Iraqi technocrats in consultation with CPA officials. All sides have been deliberately vague on how the political council will be chosen, though CPA officials have made clear that they will have the final say. In the meantime, the CPA is handling virtually all government functions in Iraq - from clearing the rubbish in Baghdad to handling negotiations with foreign companies and organising a squad for next year's Olympic Games in Athens. On Monday Mr Bremer visited a soccer stadium and announced that the CPA would work to create an Iraqi Olympic committee that would allow the nation to return to the games, after being frozen out by international sanctions since the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. The national Olympic committee was the fiefdom of Uday Hussein, the son of the ousted president. Mr Bremer also said he would seek to have Iraq's foreign debt reduced but admitted that, after much investigating, it was still unclear how big the debt was. An executive of Russian oil company Lukoil, whose contract to develop the West Qurna oilfield in Iraq was cancelled in January, said on Monday the company was talking to the CPA about the recent decision by the Iraqi oil ministry to reaffirm the cancellation following the lifting of sanctions.
Direct Link: --http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1054416349693
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