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Date Posted: 08:28:23 04/10/03 Thu
U.S. Identifies 43 Iraqi Leaders for Meeting
10.04.2003 [02:45]
The United States has identified about 43 Iraqi politicians -- 14 former exiles and about 29 from inside the country -- to take part in a meeting in southern Iraq on the political future of the country, a leading Iraqi politician said on Wednesday.
Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi told Reuters the meeting would take place on Saturday at the Ali ibn Abi Talib airbase outside the town of Nassiriya.
Vice President Dick Cheney also had said it would be on Saturday but his office said afterward it would be later, depending on the state of security on the ground.
Three U.S. officials -- White House special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Ryan Crocker and an unidentified special adviser to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- are expected to chair the one-day session, Chalabi said from Nassiriya in a telephone interview.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the venue of the meeting was also uncertain. "(It) depends on the circumstances of security, of the fighting, of what goes on inside Iraq ... It's just not decided yet," he told reporters.
Chalabi, who flew to Nassiriya on Sunday with U.S. special forces, complained that the list of participants was weighted toward tribal leaders and people from rural areas.
"Tribal leaders are very important of course but Iraq is an overwhelmingly urban society and I think there should be more representation for the urban people," he said.
"Baghdad is not sufficiently represented and I think there can be some refinements of the people chosen from the various areas. ... The composition at this time looks like Noah's Ark but that is fine at this stage," he added.
Cheney said the meeting would begin planning for an interim Iraqi government.
"We will bring together representatives of groups from all over Iraq to begin to sit down and talk about planning for the future of this Iraqi interim authority and getting it up and running," he told a meeting of U.S. newspaper editors.
NO 'CORONATION'
But Chalabi said he did not expect the gathering to make any major decisions. "There is a general statement of intent about the Iraqi interim authority that the United States wants to express to the people," he added.
Boucher said the meeting would not be a "coronation" for any Iraqi politician, a reference to Chalabi, and that it would not choose the future Iraqi government.
"It's an opportunity for coalition officials to meet with free Iraqis from inside and outside Iraq to discuss their vision of the future. ... It's not a meeting of organizational leaders or of political figures," he added.
The United States sees the meeting as the first of a series of regional meetings that will culminate in a conference in Baghdad to form the interim authority, he added.
But after the absence of party politics inside Iraq for more than 30 years, the gathering could by default set a precedent for representation in the interim authority.
Because of Iraq's oil reserves and the concentration of resources in the hands of the state, whoever acquires power first in the country will be well placed to retain it.
Chalabi's group won a head start over its rivals last weekend when the U.S. military flew him and some 700 INC members to Nassiriya to start political operations.
U.S. television channels on Tuesday showed the U.S. military distributing rifles and grenade launchers to some of the 700 men, whom the INC calls the Free Iraqi Forces.
Chalabi and his aides declined to say when the group planned to move from Nassiriya to the capital Baghdad, where the authority of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein appeared to have completely collapsed on Wednesday.
"The Iraqi National Council is a national movement and Baghdad is the capital city," one of his aides said.
The INC received a delegation on Wednesday from the office of retired Lt. Gen Jay Garner, named by the Bush administration to run civil affairs in Iraq under U.S. occupation.
"They seemed to be doing some assessment. They were just asking questions like 'What's your view of the situation?"' said one of Chalabi's aides.
Cheney said Garner would start by finding out what the existing Iraqi ministries can do. "What kind of shape are they in? What kind of resources have they got? How soon can we get the health ministry up and running? How soon can we get the oil ministry up and running?" he said.
"Are there people left in those bureaus and agencies that can be part of the new Iraq? Have we gotten rid of all the Baath party folks in there who were Saddam Hussein cronies?"
The United States has repeatedly said the United Nations will have a vital or important role in rebuilding Iraq but Cheney said again on Wednesday that the United Nations would not run the reconstruction operation.
"The question of whether or not we're going to turn everything over to the United Nations and put them in charge of this process, the president has made it clear that we're not going to do that," he said.
Jonathan Wright/Reuters
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