BREMER WILL RETURN TO IRAQ TO PLAN ACCELERATED TRANSITION

  Artículo de Robin Wright and Anthony Shadid en “The Washington Post” del 12.11.2003

After two days of urgent talks in Washington with the Bush administration's foreign policy team, the top U.S. administrator in Iraq said today he plans to return to Baghdad to consult with the U.S.-appointed Governing Council there about how best to accelerate the hand-over of power to a new Iraqi government.

After discussing various proposals on ways to save Iraq's troubled political transition, Coalition Provisional Authority Administrator L. Paul Bremer said he would return to Iraq to continue "intense" discussions with the council's 24 members on President Bush's ideas for breaking a logjam on arrangements for selecting a panel to write a new Iraqi constitution before a U.N.-imposed Dec. 15 deadline. Bremer declined to give details on Bush's proposals, saying he had to brief the Governing Council first.

Amid new CIA warnings about the security situation in Iraq and growing frustration with the Iraqi Governing Council, Bremer met at the White House this morning with Bush and members of the president's National Security Council, which includes Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, CIA director George J. Tenet and others.

Speaking to reporters outside the White House after today's meeting, Bremer said Bush "remains steadfast in his determination to defeat terrorism in Iraq and . . . to give Iraqis authority over their country."

He said he did not think it was fair to say that the Governing Council is "failing" and repeatedly ducked questions on whether disillusionment with U.S. troops and public support in Iraq for an insurgency against the U.S. occupation are increasing.

"We have a war on terrorism going on," Bremer said. "The stakes are very high . . . for the war on terrorism and for moving toward a sovereign Iraqi government. It's a tough situation [but] I'm extremely confident about the outcome. . . . "

Bremer made reference to this morning's deadly bombing of the Italian military police headquarters in the southern town of Nasiriyah, saying, "We're going to have difficult days ahead, because the terrorists are determined to deny the Iraqis the right to run their own country. We're not going to let them get away with that."

Bush's foreign policy team also met with Bremer at the White House yesterday. Among the proposals discussed then was a plan to hold some form of elections in Iraq, possibly in four to six months, to select a new body that would write a constitution and an executive to assume sovereign powers in Baghdad. That formula is comparable to the model in postwar Afghanistan.

A senior U.S. official described the administration's desire to move faster as a "sane and rational change of course."

Administration officials said yesterday that a decision on how to proceed could be delayed by divisions within the Bush administration as well as within the Iraqi Governing Council. Some senior Pentagon policymakers favor a separate proposal that would basically hand over sovereignty to the council, despite widespread indications that vast numbers of Iraqis do not accept the body as legitimate.

The U.S. shift is motivated in part by security concerns -- matching the political transition to the gradual reduction of U.S. troops next year. The sooner a government that is embraced by the majority of Iraqis is in place, U.S. officials believe, the sooner stability might return, allowing troops and coalition officials to withdraw.

The Bush administration has been increasingly concerned about the political transition as a U.N.-imposed Dec. 15 deadline looms for the Governing Council to arrange selection of a panel to write a constitution -- the critical first step in handing back power to Iraqis -- and provide a timetable for a referendum, a census and the first democratic elections. But deep disagreements on the council over how to select a constitutional committee has stalled any progress.

"The goal is to get a constitutional process going, and find the best way to transfer more and more authority to Iraqi leaders who are recognized as legitimate in the eyes of the Iraqi people," said a senior official with the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority.

U.S. officials stressed yesterday that they do not intend to abruptly abandon the Governing Council. One proposal calls for the council to be expanded in a way that would include members selected by Iraqis and thereby confer greater legitimacy to it.

Even if a new process is set into motion, the council would remain the chief Iraqi authority until then. Members of the council would be eligible to participate in a new assembly and leadership roles -- this time as officials elected by Iraqis rather than appointed by an occupying power.

But the ideas with stronger U.S. backing seek a transition that eventually moves beyond the council. One proposal calls for the council to establish an interim constitution or set of basic laws by which an election could be held for a constitutional committee by next summer. That committee would help establish a sovereign executive to rule until a constitution is written and the first democratic elections are held for a permanent post-Saddam Hussein government.

The administration is determined to act decisively, since the council has not agreed even on how to pick other Iraqis to write a constitution.

"There's serious frustration about the way it's worked so far. The council has not demonstrated the ability to have a seriousness of purpose or single-mindedness about its work," a senior administration official said yesterday.

Some council members, in turn, have contended that the failure of the U.S.-led occupation to give them greater authority in running Iraq's affairs, particularly in security, made it difficult to put down a rebellion in an arc of territory running north and west of Baghdad. That lack of security has made their task more difficult. Some on the council are pressing the occupation authority to grant it the status of a provisional government, a step they contend would bring greater stability.

Iraq's interim foreign minister, Hoshyar Zubari, said at a news conference Sunday that the lack of security could derail the U.N.-imposed deadline, now less than five weeks away.

"Those timetables depend on the security situation, and if the security deteriorates, we will not adhere to such commitments," he said.

The biggest disagreement appears to be the duration of the constitutional process, a project that would, in effect, put the Governing Council out of a job by creating an alternative, elected body. U.S. officials want a constitutional convention chosen and the document written well before the 2004 elections in this country. Some council members have proposed a far lengthier process, as long as two to three years.

"We believe that the constitutional process has to be given some time," said Mowaffak Rubaie, a council member and Shiite Muslim physician who returned from exile in Britain. "It will backfire if we speed it up. We have to cook this on a slow fire."

The U.S. occupation staff is concerned that time may be running out, reinforcing the need to focus on "where is the exit," a U.S. official in Baghdad said. Part of that calculation is the belief that Iraqis themselves need to see, as the official put it, "the light at the end of the tunnel."

The CIA field report from Iraq that arrived in Washington over the weekend provided a bleak summary of the situation. It said attacks on U.S. troops and personnel have escalated to as many as 30 to 35 a day at the same time the Governing Council has been unable to move toward a constitution or election and has not gained any support from the Iraqi people, according to a senior administration official familiar with the classified report.

Although the report pulls together these pieces of bad news for the administration, its arrival was not timed to coincide with Bremer's, the official said.

Bush, in a Veterans Day speech yesterday at the Heritage Foundation, said Iraqis are on the road to assuming political control. "The Iraqis want freedom, and the Iraqis are headed toward self-government," he said.

Bush also repeated previous vows to remain in Iraq and asserted that he has a plan for its transformation. "The United States has made an unbreakable commitment to the success of freedom in Afghanistan and Iraq," he said. "We have a strategy to see that commitment through."

The president described the conflict as contained in a compact area. "The violence is focused in 200 square miles known as the Baathist Triangle, the home area to Saddam Hussein and most of his associates," Bush said. In fact, the full area of the Sunni Triangle, as the area around Baghdad and Tikrit is also known, is several thousand square miles.

Bush said the United States is battling terrorist groups in Iraq such as al Qaeda and Ansar al-Islam.

"Foreign jihadists have arrived across Iraq's borders in small groups with the goal of installing a Taliban-like regime," he said, adding that "recent reporting suggests that despite their differences, these killers are working together to spread chaos and terror and fear."

The president also used his Veterans Day remarks to speak at more length than usual about the troops killed in Iraq.

"When we lose such Americans in battle, we lose our best," he said. "For their families, this is a terrible sorrow, and we pray for their comfort. For the nation, there is a feeling of loss, and we remember and we honor every name."

In Baghdad, insurgents yesterday struck at the heart of the U.S.-led occupation for the third time in a week. They hit the presidential palace compound with a series of rockets or mortars that sent leaders of the U.S.-installed Iraqi government running to basement shelters.

Lt. Col. George Krivo, a U.S. military spokesman, confirmed two explosions inside the "green" zone, a heavily fortified area around the operations center, and one just south of it. He said that at least four vehicles were damaged, but that the strikes missed the Coalition Provisional Authority's headquarters and there were no injuries.

One source, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said at least eight projectiles had landed in the area hit but only three exploded. At least one landed in a parking lot near the helicopter pad, and close to where U.S. contractor Bechtel Corp. is based.

At a briefing earlier in the day, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. commander in Baghdad, said insurgents had been shifting tactics, increasingly using remote attacks, such as firing mortars and rockets, rather than engaging in direct combat with troops.

U.S. officials have blamed the escalating guerrilla attacks on loyalists of Hussein's former government, Iraqi Islamic militants and foreign fighters but have acknowledged that the degree of coordination between the groups is unclear.

Shadid reported from Baghdad. Staff writers Ariana Eunjung Cha in Baghdad and Dana Milbank, Walter Pincus, Peter Slevin, Thomas E. Ricks and William Branigin in Washington contributed to this report.