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Paul Bremer, the U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, is now facing underhanded attempts at undermining his agenda from State Department officials in Baghdad, with one referring to his sweeping de-Baathification policies as "fascistic," according to an informed source in Iraq. The senior administrator who made the comment, Robin Rafael, is not alone in her sentiments, as several other Foggy Bottom officials stationed in the country are trying to covertly remake Iraq as they want it, not as Bremer — or the president who sent him there — wants it... ...At least Rafael and O'Sullivan only have bad judgments working against...

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REBUILDING IN THE GULF Iraqis exact revenge on Saddam's regime Former Baath Party officials killed in systematic assassinations -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: May 20, 2003 1:25 p.m. Eastern © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com Liberated Iraqi citizens are taking matters in their own hands and have begun assassinating former ruling Baath Party officials, reports the Washington Post. The killings of mid-level government functionaries and Baathist icons, according to the Post, appear to have increased following the U.S. decree last Friday that prohibits senior party officials from holding positions in the top three tiers of Iraq's postwar government. In one example, the singer Daoud Qais, known...

BAGHDAD - A council of up to nine Iraqis will probably lead the country’s still unformed interim government through the coming months, the American civil administrator said on Monday.Retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner also said he expects the newly appointed L. Paul Bremer, former head of the State Department’s counter terrorism office, to take charge of the political process within the US postwar administration.“What you may see is as many as seven, eight, nine leaders working together to provide leadership,” Garner said. He added, though, that he didn’t know how the collective leadership would function specifically.The Iraqi leaders Garner referred...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. forces on Sunday arrested an Iraqi exile who had proclaimed himself Baghdad's mayor, saying he was exerting authority he didn't have. Mohammed Mohsen al-Zubaidi was arrested at 5 p.m. in downtown Baghdad "for his inability to support the coalition military authority and for exercising authority which was not his," said U.S. military spokesman Capt. David Connolly, speaking in Baghdad. Soldiers arrested seven others found with al-Zubaidi, Connolly said without identifying them. Al-Zubaidi, who has cast himself as a volunteer to help Iraq (news - web sites) get back on its feet, never discouraged widespread rumors that...

Iraq could do much worse. If I was ever to volunteer for the role of American colonial puppet, I would hope to play my role with the same panache that Ahmad Chalabi has brought to the part. Denounced only last month by yet another anonymous "report" from the CIA and sneered at on a daily basis by the New York Times, he has either failed to be sufficiently biddable by the puppet-masters or (how simple it all seems when you think of it) has cleverly arranged to be the object of his own disinformation campaign. If it's the latter, then...

AS THE hunt for Saddam Hussein’s fallen lieutenants continued, officials from the United States last night claimed a further four scalps from Iraq’s feared intelligence hierarchy. Most senior to fall into the hands of coalition forces was Muzahim Sa’b Hassan al-Tikriti, who headed Iraq’s air defences under Saddam. He was number ten on the US list of the top 55 most wanted officials from Saddam’s regime currently being hunted by both US and UK special forces, including SAS troops. "They’re collapsing like a house of cards," said Lieutenant Colonel Tom Kurasiewicz, a spokesman for the Pentagon. Another official said US...

<p>BAGHDAD — The Iraqi National Congress said yesterday that it has received several credible reports of sightings of Saddam Hussein and that it is hunting the ousted president in an area between Baghdad and the Iranian border.</p> <p>"We are 12 to 24 hours behind him, but we are getting closer," said Zab Sethna, the chief spokesman for the group, which is expected to be a major player in Iraq's interim government. "We are convinced he is alive and on the run."</p>

Saddam Hussein's intelligence chief tried to arrange a meeting last week between US representatives and the former Iraqi leader, who an opposition official believes was seen about three days ago, ABC News reported. Leaders of Iraq's prominent Dulaym tribe told the US network that they had made contact with former CIA officer Bob Baer and others to try to arrange some kind of meeting."They told me the chief of Iraqi intelligence was seeking to get in touch with the United States and could I do anything about that," said Baer, who now works for ABC News.Saddam's intelligence chief, General...

American governor for Baghdad says she does not recognise 'mayor' By Andrew Buncombe in Baghdad 22 April 2003 She has held some of the hardest jobs of any American diplomat, yet Barbara Bodine may be about to take on her toughest challenge yet. Ms Bodine is to become the US co-ordinator for central Iraq, assuming a position that will make her responsible for Baghdad. She arrived in the Iraqi capital yesterday with retired Lieutenant-General Jay Garner, the man who is heading the civilian administration for the entire country. She immediately placed herself at the centre of controversy, saying America did...

<p>Two U.S. congressmen were in Syria on Sunday, and said President Bashar Assad told them his government will not give asylum to Iraqis wanted for war crimes and will expel any Iraqis who cross into Syria.</p> <p>Reps. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., and Darrell Issa, R-Calif., were the first American officials to meet Assad since the recent escalation of U.S.-Syrian tensions.</p>

America nervous as militant cleric's rallies attract mass support By Julian Coman in Washington and Sean Rayment in Kuwait (Filed: 20/04/2003) Every day, the rallies held by Battle to prevent Chalabi taking power grow bigger. Every day the American marines in the eastern Iraqi town of Kut, close to the Iranian border, become more nervous. Mr Abbas is a militant Shia cleric with an unnervingly fine grasp of the political possibilities of post-war Iraq. Some days ago, he walked into Kut town hall and simply took it over, accompanied by hundreds of supporters, many of whom had crossed the border...

HER dusty file was one of hundreds of thousands of documents stacked in a house in a wealthy neighbourhood of Baghdad. Asma Rasheed married a pilot, lived comfortably in the presidential compound of Saddam Hussein and directed a microbiology programme that was not supposed to exist. Rasheed’s light blue folder has emerged from a huge archive seized by forces loyal to Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress, which opposed Saddam. The archive — a dark who’s who of Iraq — reveals the tiniest details of blandishments and humiliations by a paranoid regime that shared the Nazis’ obsession...

BAGHDAD: Pro-American Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi has said the United States should oversee post-war Iraq and the United Nations lacked the capability and credibility to take a leadership role there. At a news conference in the Iraqi Hunting Club – his first since arriving in Baghdad on Wednesday – Chalabi also said he did not want a post in an interim Iraqi government and would devote himself to developing civil society. But the man seen by many analysts as the US choice to lead Iraq left open the question of whether he would stand as a candidate if the country...

<p>BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 18 — Western officials working on the reconstruction of Iraq agreed Friday that an interim authority in Baghdad could take over most government functions from the U.S. military in only a few weeks.</p> <p>THE OFFICIALS, who are part of the organization put together by the Pentagon’s administrator in Iraq, retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, confirmed statements Friday by Iraqi opposition leader Ahmad Chalabi that the interim authority would assume power “sooner rather than later, a matter of weeks rather than months.” The officials, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, would not be more specific, but they said they had no quarrel with the timetable laid out by Chalabi, who said at a news conference that “the Iraqi interim authority will be chosen by Iraqis and will take over the business of government.” Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress, the most prominent of a quarrelsome collection of exile groups that formed in opposition to the government of deposed President Saddam Hussein, said the first stage would be “reconstruction of basic services, done by Jay Garner.” “I expect this step to take a few weeks,” he said, with a new constitution and general elections two years down the road. Ultimately, Chalabi said, the U.S. military would have just three functions in Iraq: to eradicate any weapons of mass destruction, to dismantle the ousted regime’s “apparatus of terror” and to disarm the previous regime’s army. “The United States of America does not want to run Iraq,” Chalabi said. “That is the policy of the United States. That’s what President Bush has said, and I believe him.”</p>

In a monumental first meeting, Iraqi diplomats and exiles—and the U.S. military—discuss democracy in the ancient city of Ur Iraqi exile Entifada Qanbar is a pretty tough guy. He fought in the Iran-Iraq War for five years. He was arrested by Saddam Hussein’s abusive secret police. Eleven of his close friends were executed. He escaped Iraq in 1990 and hadn’t been back—until yesterday. TUESDAY AFTERNOON, when we landed at Tallil Air Base in Iraq, the 44-year-old couldn’t keep from crying. “It’s a great thing. A dream that came through,” he said. “This is something I dedicated all my life for.”...

WASHINGTON: Pro-American Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi returned to the capital Baghdad on Wednesday on his first visit to the city since the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958, an adviser said. "We've just arrived and we have set up a headquarters in central Baghdad," said Zaab Sethna, who traveled with Chalabi in the motorcade from the southern town of Nassiriya. "His first plan is to go see his old home and then start building democracy in Iraq," added Sethna, speaking by satellite phone from Baghdad. Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress), was the first major exile politician to reach...

REBUILDING PLAN AGREED Free Iraqis have drawn up a 13-point plan to rebuild their country following the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime. The plan was agreed at US-hosted talks at Ur, the birthplace of the biblical prophet Abraham. The delegates also voted to meet again in 10 days' time. In a statement they said a future Iraqi government must be democratic, no leader must be imposed from outside, and the Baath party must be dissolved. As the meeting began, hundreds marched through the streets of nearby Nasiriyah protesting about US involvement in their country's future. They were concerned that the...

Pundits and reporters are being sold on the idea that Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi exile leader, is largely the creation of American neoconservatives such as Paul Wolfowitz. They miss the point. Chalabi is so prominent in discussions of Iraq's future because for ten years he has been leading the central organization of Iraqis opposed to Saddam and the Baath regime. The Iraqi National Congress (INC) was founded by Chalabi in 1992 as an all-inclusive democratic opposition movement to remove Saddam and create a united federal government of laws in Iraq. The INC is not a faction or special-interest group seeking...

Armed men continued to besiege the home of Shia spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani on Sunday giving him until Monday to leave the country or face attack, aides to the cleric claimed. The stand-off is a worrying sign of volatility and religious strife among Iraq’s majority community and raises concerns of national unity in post-war Iraq. Tensions are rising among Najaf's Shia community Kuwait-based Ayatollah Abul Qasim Dibaji accused Jimaat-E-Sadr-Thani, led by Moqdada Sadr, of trying to take control of the holy sites of Iraq. “Armed thugs and hooligans have had the house of Ayatollah Sistani under siege since...