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<p>UMM QASR, Iraq — The vanguard of an interim government arrived in southern Iraq yesterday, rolling up in dusty sport utility vehicles after driving from Kuwait City, to establish a civil administration for postwar Iraq.</p> <p>About three dozen retired officers, bureaucrats and technical experts set up the first Iraqi field office of the Pentagon's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), which will fund and guide the initial rehabilitation of Iraq's human services and infrastructure.</p>

Officials from the agency set up by the Americans to run post-war Iraq have started work in the impoverished southern port of Umm Qasr. They are led by former US General Buck Walters, one of three American envoys who will oversee the reconstruction of Iraq by administering three regions - northern, central and southern. Mr Walters said on arrival in Umm Qasr that his team would work to provide schools, jobs, running water and health care. The BBC's Jennifer Glass in Umm Qasr says the port needs all of these things and the new team must try to fill the...

The US is ready to install the first leg of an interim government for the new Iraq as early as Tuesday, even while fighting still rages in Baghdad, officials said yesterday. America's readiness to establish the first stages of a civil administration to run post-war Iraq comes at lightning speed and constitutes a rebuff to European ambitions to stall on the process until some kind of role for the United Nations is agreed. It was reported yesterday that the National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice has also ruled out any key role for the UN. The decision to proceed with an...

DUBAI (Reuters) - The United States plans to install the first stages of a civil administration to run post-War Iraq (news - web sites) in the southern port of Umm Qasr within days, a U.S. official said on Saturday. Members of the Pentagon (news - web sites)'s Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) are scheduled to start operating in the port as early as Tuesday, the official said. "What we are going to start trying to do, even before the fighting is over in Iraq, is to move to the areas in Iraq that are relatively peaceful, places like...