WASHINGTON, 5 April 2003 — The White House said yesterday it would consider military action in Iraq a success even if US forces failed to find President Saddam Hussein, whose appearance on Iraqi television could prove he survived a US bombing raid on the first night of the war.

While finding Saddam — either dead or alive — would be “helpful,” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said President George W. Bush’s “definition of victory” was removing the current government from power and eliminating the country’s alleged weapons of mass destruction.

Fleischer made the comments just before Iraqi television broadcast a speech apparently by Saddam urging the people of Baghdad to “strike the enemy with force” and predicted victory over the invading US and British troops.

In the address, Saddam mentioned the shooting down of a US Apache helicopter by an Iraqi farmer in late March. The mention of the incident, originally reported by Iraqi officials on March 24, may be the first clear proof the Iraqi president survived a US bombing on Baghdad on March 20 that targeted him and his two sons.

If Saddam eludes US forces, he could join the ranks of America’s most wanted, a list now topped by Al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden, whom Washington blames for the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. “What’s important in the president’s judgment is that the regime be disarmed and that the regime be changed so the Iraqi people can be free and liberated,” Fleischer said earlier.

“Certainly any clear resolution about Saddam Hussein’s fate helps provide some clarity to that,” Fleischer said. “But the definition of victory is those two factors that I cited, that the president has cited.”

Bush administration officials are considering quickly installing an interim Iraqi authority in areas under the control of US-led forces while the government in Baghdad is cut off from the rest of the country.

Several hundred US government officials are already encamped in Kuwait waiting on the word to go into Iraq to set up the post-war Iraq Interim Authority under the leadership for retired Gen. Jay Garner.

A top contender to oversee Iraq’s oil industry in the short-term is Phillip J. Carroll, Royal Dutch/Shell Group’s former chief executive in the United States, US officials said.

Carroll was chief executive of Shell Oil, the company’s US subsidiary, from 1993-98. He then joined engineering and construction company Fluor Corp. as chairman and CEO, retiring last year. Fluor is among the US companies being considered for post-war contracts in Iraq.

Timothy Carney, a former ambassador to Sudan, is preparing to run Iraq’s Ministry of Industry, while Robin Raphel, former ambassador to Tunisia, has been penciled in to run the Ministry of Trade, and Kenton Keith, a former ambassador to Qatar, would run the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, US officials said.

The US military and its war allies envision operating the Iraqi government for at least weeks, but probably longer, during the immediate aftermath of the Iraq war.

US officials, aware that they stand to suffer severe international criticism for running what would amount to a puppet government, said they want to involve Iraqis in the running of the government as soon as possible.

The hope is to quickly restart a number of nonpolitical agencies like agriculture and water and others that would not be stacked with Saddam loyalists.

The United States wants to assure the United Nations that it will have a role in the reconstruction of postwar Iraq but what role it would be and how quickly it would start has not yet been determined.

US officials want the UN oil-for-food program to continue in order to get urgent humanitarian aid to the people.

Fleischer declined to comment on any US plans to get the interim authority quickly up and running in southern Iraq, saying the shooting war was still under way. “This is still a battlefield in many ways, in many places, and that remains the primary mission still is to win the war,” he told reporters.

Fleischer said any interim governing body would be made up of both Iraqi exiles and Iraqis who still live in the country.

Installing an authority even before Saddam is toppled in Baghdad may help to blunt charges that US military intends to keep full control over Iraq for the foreseeable future.

Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the US military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, estimated on Thursday that US-led forces had so far taken 45 percent of Iraqi territory.