BAGHDAD, 28 April 2003 — US forces seeking to restore order to a shattered Iraq seized the self-appointed mayor of Baghdad yesterday for trying to run the city without their authority and whisked him out of the Iraqi capital.
Mohammed Mohsen Zubaidi, a former exile who declared himself mayor 10 days ago, was “removed” from Baghdad for obstructing efforts to get Iraqis back to work after the war that ousted Saddam Hussein, a US military statement said.
The military also reported it had detained Gen. Hussam Mohammad Amin, a key figure in negotiations with the UN inspectors who hunted banned Iraqi weapons before the war.
Amin, No. 49 on a US list of 55 most-wanted members of Saddam’s entourage, is the 13th known to be in custody. A US military source said he was caught west of Baghdad on Saturday but declined to reveal who captured him.
US Central Command in Qatar said seven other members of Zubaidi’s organization had also been detained. Five were later released and the rest were being held at an internment facility in Iraq. “There were no injuries and no exchange of gunfire,” it said.
Central Command said Zubaidi had sent letters to individuals and organizations in Baghdad telling them not to go back to work at power, water and sewage plants and banks unless he approved it. It said Zubaidi had fired power company employees and appointed his allies in their place.
The organization set up by Zubaidi, the Local Council of Baghdad, said in a statement he had been arrested because he decided to pay salaries for employees this month with pay increases “suitable with the living conditions of citizens”.
It said he should be released immediately.
Zubaidi’s supporters have been selling job application forms in Baghdad for 250 dinars (15 cents). Sales have been brisk, with civil servants employed under Saddam anxious to know where their next pay packet might come from in postwar Iraq.
In a sign of the resentment facing US troops in some quarters, a gunman ambushed two Humvee vehicles stopped in traffic in Baghdad and wounded four soldiers, one seriously. There was no immediate indication of the attacker’s identity.
In Baghdad, retired American Gen. Jay Garner, charged with rebuilding Iraq, promised Iraqis in a radio broadcast he would help reconstruct the country and forge an honest government.
A senior aide said Garner would meet 300 to 400 of Iraq’s leading political, religious and ethnic figures in Baghdad today to identify potential leaders and discuss forming a new government.
Barbara Bodine, Garner’s coordinator for central Iraq, said pro-American Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress umbrella group, had been invited. So had the country’s main Shiite group, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).
A spokesman for SCIRI, which is based in Tehran, said the group would probably attend the meeting on condition Washington allowed Iraqis to choose their own interim government.
The participation of SCIRI would be a boost for US officials hoping to make today’s meeting a broad gathering of religious, ethnic and political forces.
Bodine met two Saddam-era Baghdad deputy mayors yesterday to try to get repair work going. An aide said they discussed restoring water, sewage and waste collection services, severely damaged by US bombing.
A US television network reported that initial tests on a 55-gallon (200-liter) barrel of chemicals found by US forces in northern Iraq had detected nerve and blistering agents.
Quoting Pentagon officials, ABC News said special forces had found 14 unmarked barrels, at least a dozen missiles and 150 gas masks at a site 180 km (112 miles) northwest of Baghdad.
