BAGHDAD, 19 May 2003 — Two of Iraq’s main parties blasted the United States yesterday, accusing Washington of going back on what they said was a firm US commitment to give Iraqis a free hand in running the country.
Officials from one of the two main Kurdish factions and the leading Shiite movement said the new US overseer, Paul Bremer, turned back the clock on months of talks that began before the war to prepare a post-Saddam Hussein government.
The charges stem from a meeting Friday night at which they said Bremer had announced he planned to prolong the US coalition’s control over the country and sideline Iraqis from the political decision-making process.
“What we’re hearing now from Bremer is what we heard several months ago,” said Adel Abdul Mahdi, a political adviser from the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI), the top Shiite movement.
“It’s a return to square one,” he said, referring to negotiations before the war about the role of anti-Saddam Hussein groups in a future government.
Abdul Mahdi and other officials interviewed by AFP said they were angered by Bremer’s handling of the meeting, his first announced talks with the groups since taking over as US administrator last Monday from Jay Garner.
They said Garner and Zalmay Khalilzad, the White House envoy involved in talks with anti-Saddam parties since before the war, pledged just two weeks ago to give those parties a leading role in forming a future Iraqi government.
But that commitment, they said, was rejected by Bremer, a career diplomat who now oversees Garner, Khalilzad and the entire US civilian administration governing the country since Saddam’s ouster.
“The Americans are doing as they please,” said Adel Murad, spokesman for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). “Iraq is a big country. Foreigners cannot run it.”
The emotionally and politically explosive issue of when the United States would be prepared to hand over power to an Iraqi government was largely left untouched in the immediate aftermath of Saddam’s fall on April 9.
But at a Baghdad conference of around 250 people late last month, headed by Garner, there was a broad agreement that a national conference would be held by the end of May to select around 20 ministers to form the interim government.
Garner said May 5 that a handful of the main groups, including SAIRI and the PUK, would form the nucleus of the new government.
