Pentagon sending a team of exiles to help run Iraq

New York Times
April 26, 2003
By Douglas Jehl with Jane Perlez

The Pentagon has begun sending a team of Iraqi exiles to Baghdad to be part of a temporary American-led government there, senior administration officials said today.

The exiles, most of whom are said by officials to have a background in administration, are supposed to take up positions at each of 23 Iraqi ministries, where they will work closely with American and British officials under Jay Garner, the retired lieutenant general who is serving as Iraq's day-to-day administrator.

The group of technocrats was assembled two months ago and has been working from an office in suburban Virginia.

From Baghdad, General Garner has just begun to convene meetings of Iraqi notables to meet what senior administration officials described today as their longer-term goal of forming an interim Iraqi authority by the end of May faster than at first planned.

But that process is proving fractious, with the largest group of Shiite Muslim exiles boycotting the talks so far and other exiles deeply suspicious of Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi National Congress official who is seen as a Pentagon favorite.

As that effort unfolds, the task of the exiles, organized as an Iraqi Reconstruction and Development Council, will be to rebuild the structures of a government that would then be handed over to the new Iraqi authority, administration officials said.

General Garner said on Thursday that an interim Iraqi authority would be in place next week, but other senior American officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, said the general's comments had been misinterpreted. A meeting of Iraqi notables is to be held in Baghdad on Monday, but American officials said the new goal agreed on at White House meetings this week for putting an interim Iraqi authority in place set the deadline as late May.

A consensus within the administration favors "moving faster rather than slower," a senior administration official said, in part `'because we want to remove the appearance of this being an American operation."

The team of Iraqi technocrats was selected by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz but is officially employed by a defense contractor, SAIC, the officials said. The team is headed by Emad Dhia, an engineer who left Iraq 21 years ago and who will become the top Iraqi adviser to General Garner. As head of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, General Garner is functioning as Iraq's civil administrator.

Victor Rostow, a Pentagon policy official who is serving as a liaison to the Iraqi team, said its task would be to help General Garner "turn over functioning ministries to the new Iraqi interim authority after a period of time."

Among the 150 Iraqi exiles on the team, at least 10, including Mr. Dhia, left for Kuwait today on their way to Baghdad. By the end of next week, at least 25 are expected to be in Baghdad, including officials designated by the Pentagon to be in charge of the ministries of oil, planning and industry.

Among those identified by Pentagon officials were Muhammad al-Hakim, who is to become the senior Iraqi at the Ministry of Planning and to supervise provincial affairs, and Muhammad Ali Zainy, an engineer and former senior official of Iraq's Ministry of Oil who is to become the senior Iraqi at that ministry.

Mr. Dhia was chosen by Mr. Wolfowitz because of his role as the leader of a group called the Forum for Democracy in Iraq, whose members span the full spectrum of Iraq's Sunni and Shiite Muslims and Kurdish and Christian minorities, administration officials said. They said that members of that group played a leading role last year in a State Department project on the future of Iraq.

Mr. Dhia, who is on a leave of absence from the Pfizer pharmaceutical company in Ann Arbor, Mich., worked with the Pentagon to select other members of the team, many of whom were drawn from his organization, the officials said.

They include engineers, civil administrators and other professionals, some of whom served in Iraqi ministries in the 1970's and 1980's before fleeing the country, the officials said.

In a telephone interview before he left for Kuwait today, Mr. Dhia described the team's mission as a huge task. "It's something we have always dreamed of," he said, "that we go back and we establish democracy in Iraq, and help our people recover from 34 years of brutal dictatorship."

The officials said they did not have details of Mr. Hakim's background. They described Mr. Zainy as an American citizen whose previous work has included posts with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and with a London-based energy publication.

Mr. Dhia and Mr. Rostow provided the names of just seven Iraqis among the team of exiles, some of whom are now citizens of the United States or European countries where they have made their homes in exile. Mr. Rostow said that only a handful had agreed to be identified by name. "Most of these people believe that if they are seen as agents of America, they will be killed," he said.

By setting up office outside of the Pentagon, with telephone numbers and e-mail addresses that gave no hint of their government ties, he said, "they have gone to some lengths not to be seen that way."

According to Mr. Rostow, other members of the Iraqi team who left for Baghdad today, with the offices to which they will be assigned, include: Sam Kareem, transportation and telecommunication; Sid Hakky, health; Muhyi al-Kateeb, foreign ministry; Ramsey Jiddou, industry; Khidhir Hamza, atomic energy; Adam Sheroza, youth ministry; and Ali Alzurufi, Najaf Province.

General Garner's team is still taking shape. In his first week in Iraq, he has spent part of his time trying to sideline Iraqis who appointed themselves to positions of power, including Muhammad al-Zubeidi, the self-declared governor of Baghdad.

But in the last few days, the administration has begun to make public the names of Americans who will fill senior roles on General Garner's staff, including Peter McPherson, a former banker who is now president of Michigan State University, and who the Treasury Department said today would function as the principal financial and economic policy adviser to the team.

The end of May is now a target hand-over date, senior administration officials said, in part because the current United Nations arrangement allowing Iraq to export its oil and use proceeds to buy food is due to expire in early June.

Among the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, France, Russia and China have all made clear that want to see any future arrangement for oil exports in Iraqi hands, not American ones.

"The idea is that you want to have a legitimate Iraqi interim authority in place because it makes all the issues move forward more quickly, including the pumping of oil," a State Department official said.

A second State Department official involved in the process said today that it was possible, though not highly likely, that after Monday's gathering, a national conference would be called for May 2 and that that gathering would choose delegates for the interim Iraqi authority.

According to State Department and Pentagon officials, Mr. Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, has argued that he should head the interim authority. But several senior officials said that was unlikely.

At a Pentagon briefing today, Mr. Rumsfeld said that General Garner had clarified Thursday's statement during a secure video conference this morning with Mr. Bush.

"What he was talking about was the fact that there was a meeting next week, the second of the series of meetings that very likely will proceed as a buildup to the establishment of an Iraqi interim authority," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

The meeting that General Garner will head on Monday is to include about 100 Iraqis, about double the number at the last conference, held in Nasiriyah earlier this month. It will include representatives from the Kurdish groups, the Iraqi National Accord, and those who represent Mr. Chalabi. Two delegates will be sent by Adnan Pachachi, the foreign minister before Saddam Hussein took power in 1979.

But representatives of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shiite group based in Iran, have said they will boycott the meeting because Iraqis should be in charge of inviting participants. That group is to take part in a meeting in Spain this weekend that includes most Iraqi political groups.

In Baghdad today, General Garner was huddled inside the opulent Republican palace preparing for the conference. Some of his senior staff members former and current American ambassadors who are supposed to be reorganizing the ministries wandered the marbled halls of the palace looking for office space.

They had no e-mail function, no way for outsiders to reach them by telephone. Several laughed when asked if they had cars and drivers to get them around the city. They are yet to receive interpreters. Two weeks after the end of the fighting, they seemed as ill-equipped as the Iraqis they had come to help.

 
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