Rice Leaves Rumsfeld Hot Under the Collar

The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, revealed the depth of the fissures within the Bush administration yesterday with a remarkably bad-tempered interview in which he claimed not to have been told about an important overhaul of policymaking on Iraq.

The restructuring is designed to centralise daily decisions in the White House under the control of the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, after harsh criticism from political foes and allies alike of the Pentagon's lack of planning for postwar Iraq.

There is mounting speculation in Washington that Mr Rumsfeld will be dropped from the administration before the November election.

In his interview with the Financial Times and other European newspapers, Mr Rumsfeld said he was not told in advance about a memorandum by Ms Rice on the creation of the Iraq stabilisation group, and had not discussed it with George Bush. He implied it would make no difference to how the occupation was run.

He also questioned the motives of Ms Rice, the head of the White House's national security council, in distributing a confidential memorandum on the restructuring, and giving the New York Times a background briefing on it.

Mr Rumsfeld said: "I don't know quite what the purpose of the backgrounding was. She gave a background, she said what she said, and the way I read the memorandum is that it is basically what the responsibility of the NSC is and always has been ...

"I happen not to know that she was going to write a memo, but that's true every day that somebody on the NSC writes a memorandum ... I mean I write memorandums that people don't know I'm writing until people receive it."

Asked why the new policy-making unit was necessary, he replied: "I think you have to ask Condi that question."

Pressed, he lost patience. "I said I don't know. Isn't that clear? You don't understand English? I was not there for the backgrounding."

White House officials have insisted that Mr Rumsfeld's authority has not declined and that the Pentagon remains the lead agency in Iraq. Yesterday Scott McClellan, a White House spokesman, said there were no differences between the White House and Mr Rumsfeld: "I looked at what he said, it's right in line with what we said."

But Ralph Peters, a former colonel in intelligence and a military analyst, claimed that though events in Iraq were going better than had been presented in the western media, the White House accepted that Mr Rumsfeld's office had failed to plan properly for the postwar occupation.

"They're not unhappy with the Pentagon, they're unhappy with Rumsfeld and his paladins; [he] is increasingly seen as a liability," Mr Peters said.

"Their trouble is if you get rid of him prematurely you make it an admission of failure. If you do it too late you don't get the benefits in time for the election."