BAGHDAD, 28 March 2004 — The United States will transfer power in Iraq to a hand-picked prime minister, abandoning plans for an expansion of the current 25-member Governing Council, according to coalition officials in Baghdad.
With fewer than 100 days before the US occupation authorities are due to transfer sovereignty, fear of wrangling among Iraqi politicians has forced Washington to make its third switch of strategy in six months.
The search is now on for an Iraqi to serve as chief executive. He will almost certainly be a Shiite, and probably a secular technocrat.
“There will be no (Paul) Bremer and there will be a prime minister,” a coalition official said Friday. “That will be the biggest change with the transfer of sovereignty.”
Bremer is the US head of the coalition’s provisional authority whose term expires on June 30 when the occupation formally ends.
The choice of prime minister has become the main focus of concern for the occupation authorities, who fear that political jockeying among competing Iraqi groups could leave a vacuum on the day.
Initial plans for enlarging the existing 25-member Governing Council, which has the task of appointing the Cabinet, have been downgraded in favor of letting the present members get on with their job. Although the council may still be increased, the process need not be tied to the June 30 deadline and could continue into the summer and autumn, as new members are co-opted.
The latest shift in focus follows a visit by Robert Blackwell, US President George W. Bush’s special envoy on Iraq, for talks with Bremer and Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain’s senior coalition representative, who is leaving Iraq this weekend after his six-month assignment.
Plans to create a three-man presidency — with a representative of the Shiite, the Sunni and the Kurds — are still under way, but its powers would be mainly symbolic.
Officials expect the prime minister to be a Shiite, as Iraq’s largest community has historically been excluded from power. To deny it the chance of the top job in Iraq’s first democratic government would send an unwanted signal to Iraqis. Officials hope the man appointed will be a technocrat, to avoid rivalry between competing politicians and to prevent one party gaining the advantage of incumbency.
The interim government will serve until direct elections for a national assembly are held at the end of the year.
Plans for picking an Iraqi government to take over when the Americans cede power on June 30 have been in turmoil for several months. An initial US proposal to hold unelected caucuses of regional “notables” to choose a council which would then nominate a Cabinet, collapsed in disarray after Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq’s leading Shiite cleric, called for direct elections.
To satisfy him and the Shiite politicians who took up his line, Washington accepted that the United Nations should send a team to mediate by assessing the feasibility of holding elections by the end of June. The US refused to delay the date because Bush wants to be able to argue during his re-election campaign that Iraq has become a functioning democracy.
After a two-week visit last month, the UN team — led by Lakhdar Brahimi, special envoy to the secretary general, Kofi Annan — supported the American view.
The latest plan, enshrined in an interim constitution known as the transitional administrative law, is to choose a government after a vague process of “extensive deliberation and consultations with cross-sections of the Iraqi people”.
The governing council invited Brahimi to return to help with the consultations. He is expected in early April. Ayatollah Sistani said this week he would not meet him or any other UN officials if the world body endorsed the transitional law.
Officials say this is no real problem since the UN is not expected to pass any new resolution on Iraq until June.
Besides appointing a prime minister, the Governing Council will have to pick a defense minister. Most other ministers are likely to be reappointed.
Bremer issued a decree this week creating a Defense Ministry to replace the one he dissolved after Saddam Hussein’s regime fell. A civilian will head it, although overall control of all forces in Iraq, including the new army, will remain in US hands.
Various plans for enlarging the Governing Council have been canvassed for weeks. The main aim was to give a voice to various groups such as Sunni religious parties, tribal leaders, associations of lawyers, doctors and other secular professionals, as well as representatives of big towns such as Mosul and Kirkuk, who were not included in the initial 25. That plan is no longer seen as urgent as the appointment of a Cabinet.
“The executive will be in place by June 30. They will have to motor to reach the timetable,” said a coalition official.
Meanwhile, US troops battled with groups of insurgents in the troubled town of Falluja yesterday, killing eight people, including three children and an Iraqi cameraman for the American network ABC.
The fighting flared after troops cordoned off two districts and began house-to-house searches for weapons and resistance members.
Several mortars were fired at the troops, but most residents stayed indoors, despite the call for Friday prayers.
