Iraqis' patience wears thin as America delays handover

When Paul Bremer, the US civilian administrator in Baghdad, appointed the Iraqi governing council, he held out the promise of a significant Iraqi influence on America's postwar reconstruction.

But nearly three months later, widening differences are emerging between the chosen Iraqi leaders and Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) that threaten American attempts to bring stability and security to Iraq. In a series of interviews with The Observer, several members of the council complained they had only a limited influence over American policies and were deeply frustrated at their lack of control over security and spending plans.

'They want to keep all the control for themselves,' said Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish politician and one of the 24 council members. 'When you are not controlling the budgets, when the security file is not under your control, and when you cannot create jobs, what can you do? It is better to give up.'

'We will be looked at as puppets of the Americans and we will fail. If we fail, they fail.'

Washington is already facing pressure from France, Germany, Russia and even the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan himself to transfer more authority more quickly to an Iraqi government ahead of elections. Yesterday, Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, said he believed a new constitution might be in place within six months. Many states want to see Iraqis given power in the same way that the transitional authority in Afghanistan ran the country after fall of the Taliban in October 2001.

In another blow to the CPA, unemployed former soldiers in Saddam Hussein's disbanded army clashed with troops in Baghdad and the southern city of Basra on Saturday in violent protests that left at least two Iraqis dead. The British Army said one of its soldiers shot dead an armed Iraqi during an angry demonstration in Basra by hundreds of men who had gathered to collect redundancy payments after being laid off from the Iraqi military.

Major Simon Routledge said a British soldier heard gunfire and then shot and killed an Iraqi holding a weapon. British troops also fired rubber bullets to disperse the crowd.

Hundreds of former Iraqi soldiers also rioted at a disused airport in Baghdad where redundancy payments are handed out. Officials at a nearby hospital said one Iraqi had been killed and several wounded in the violence. The US army said two of its soldiers were wounded.

Washington is trying to negotiate a new UN resolution that would give the world body a broader mandate in Iraq in an effort to coax reluctant countries to provide troops and funds. But France and Russia, both permanent members of the Security Council, say they are unhappy with the draft US resolution. The two countries, which opposed the war in Iraq, want a faster hand-over of power to Iraqis as a condition for their support.

Annan has said the world body could not play a proper political role in Iraq under the terms wanted by the US. Adding to tensions between the US and France, Polish troops in Iraq said on Friday they had found four French-built anti-aircraft missiles which had been produced in 2003. France said it had issued no arms export licences to Iraq since 1990 and that it was impossible its newest missiles, though not weapons of mass destruction, should turn up in Iraq.

The splits between the governing council and the CPA will delay reconstruction and a shift towards Iraqi political control. Several times in recent weeks there have been outright disputes over policy. Othman said the council was not told last week about a US decision to train 35,000 Iraqi police cadets, half the planned police force, in Jordan. The decision angered many on the council who regard the government in Amman as a former ally of Saddam's regime.

Last week, the council tried to overrule an announcement by the Finance Minister that a new investment law would allow foreign firms the right to complete ownership of Iraqi companies and the right to repatriate their profits immediately. The announcement, which senior Iraqi political sources said was largely shaped by American officials, caused an uproar among Iraqi businessmen. But American officials forced the council to back down from its criticism.

Last week, the council said it wanted committees set up to consider reinstating some members of Saddam's Baath party who had been banned from their work by an American decree. A CPA spokesman said later there would be no appeals and said 'few exemptions' for former Baath Party members had been granted.

'The problem is that whenever we have a discussion about the future with the coalition forces they say everything will be handed over after 18 months. It's their magic number,' said Ahmad al-Barak, a human rights lawyer and another council member. 'We don't want an immediate transfer of power from the Americans to the Iraqis but it should happen step by step and much faster.'

For its part, the CPA argues that the council does have an influence on decisions but that from the start Bremer always had the final say. Washington is intent on continuing to run the country until elections for a new government are held.

The council's biggest problem has been the issue of security. Last week, the senior US military commander in Iraq, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, admitted that attacks on American troops were becoming better organised and more deadly.

At least six soldiers are killed each week and around 40 injured, he said. Late last Friday, Iraqi guerillas attacked a US convoy near Baghdad with gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades, killing a 4th Infantry Division soldier and wounding another, bringing the number of US soldiers killed in action in Iraq since Washington declared major combat over on 1 May to at least 85.

Iraqis on the governing council say only handing control of security to Iraqi forces will stem the growing violence. Some on the council want to deploy militias, like the Kurdish Peshmerga forces and the Shia Badr Brigade, to handle security across the country, although the US is strongly opposed to having unlicensed militias operating in public.

Some on the council, like the Kurdish politician Othman, say Iraqis should be given control of one city at a time as part of a gradual handing over of power. 'The Americans don't know the people, they don't know the area,' he said. 'The responsibility for security should be handed to Iraqis.'

The next dispute is likely to emerge over the drawing up of a constitution which Washington wants completed before elections are held. The constitution will decide the role of Islam in the new Iraq, whether the country will be run by a president or a parliament and how strong a federalist structure will be established. But first the governing council will have to decide how to form the group that will draw up the constitution. Options range from holding full elections to choose the people who will write the constitution to simply appointing a small group to do the job.