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KUWAIT CITY April 21 — After winning some of the Iraq war's hardest fighting, Britain's Royal Marine Commandos began packing up hovercraft and landing vessels Monday to begin a long journey home. The departure over the next few weeks of the 2,000 troops of the 3rd Commando Brigade among the British army's best-trained forces is quiet proof that the war is over. Relative stability has come to the British sector in the southern city of Basra, the Faw peninsula and the vital port of Umm Qasr. Reconstruction and peace-building will be left to engineers and civil affairs troops. Still grimy...

They have quietly removed the pictures of Saddam Hussein from their sitting rooms, and reconfigured their memories to transform lives of privilege into tales of suffering. Less than two weeks after the collapse of the regime, thousands of members of the Arab Ba'ath Socialist party, the all too willing instrument of Saddam, are resuming their roles as the men and women who run Iraq. Two thousand policemen - all cardholding party members - have put on the olive green, or the grey-and-white uniforms of traffic wardens, and returned to the streets of Baghdad at America's invitation. Dozens of minders from...

<p>BAGHDAD — U.S. civilian administrators plan to open dictator Saddam Hussein's palaces to the Iraqi public to lend an idea of the free society they hope to build.</p> <p>The plan comes from the staff of Jay Garner, the 65-year-old retired U.S. general who will supervise the running and reconstruction of Iraq until its citizens can take over.</p>

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Apr 21, 2003 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- Retired U.S. General Jay Garner, who is overseeing Iraq's reconstruction after the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime, arrived in the Iraqi capital Monday. "What better day in your life can you have than to be able to help somebody else, to help other people, and that is what we intend to do," Garner said after arriving at Baghdad airport from Kuwait. Garner said his priority was to restore basic services such as water and electricity "as soon as we can," and acknowledged that the job would take intense work....

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A senior U.S. lawmaker said on Sunday the United States had underestimated the first phase of what he envisaged could be a four to five-year effort to rebuild Iraq after American-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein's regime. The United States had not planned the post-war transition as carefully as the military campaign that removed Saddam from power, said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican, on NBC's "Meet the Press." "They started very late," Lugar said of U.S. efforts to restore political stability to Iraq. The power vacuum left by the end of Saddam's rule...

<p>BAGHDAD, Iraq — A longtime Iraqi exile who has proclaimed himself in charge of Baghdad pledged Sunday that the country's new constitution would be derived from Islamic law and promised to try anyone whose "hands are stained with the blood of the Iraqi people."</p>

KUWAIT CITY — In a memo sent two weeks before the fall of Baghdad, the Pentagon office charged with rebuilding Iraq urged top commanders of U.S. ground forces to protect the Iraqi National Museum and other cultural sites from looters. "Coalition forces must secure these facilities in order to prevent looting and the resulting irreparable loss of cultural treasures," says the March 26 memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times. The Pentagon's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), led by retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, sent the five-page memo to senior commanders at the Coalition...

Ringed by US tanks and guarded by US soldiers with a very exclusive admission list, Iraq's oil ministry on Sunday appeared secluded from the disorder that reigns in the rest of Baghdad. One question nevertheless provoked a great deal of confusion: who is in charge of the world's second largest petroleum reserves? The former minister is barred from entering, as are his deputies. A man in a green suit, standing outside the barbed wire, introduced himself as Fellah al-Khawaja and said he represented the Co-ordinating Committee for the Oil Ministry, which few of the employees had heard of. It draws...

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...

DOHA, Qatar (AP) -- Amid toppled statues and paint-splattered murals, one image of Saddam Hussein endures in postwar Iraq: the stoic portrait of the former president in a suit and tie that graces pastel-colored bank notes. But the so-called "Saddam dinar,'' which has lost half its value with the collapse of the Iraqi government, could soon go the way of the Confederate dollar. Part of the U.S. reconstruction push is introducing a new Iraqi currency that -- officials hope -- will hold its value and undoubtedly be expunged of the mustachioed tyrant. Establishing a stable currency is seen as key...

U.S. Says Iraqi Police Made Latest Arrest 1 hour, 16 minutes ago Add Top Stories - AP to My Yahoo! By ELLEN KNICKMEYER, Associated Press Writer BAGHDAD, Iraq - The country's newly revived police force was credited Saturday with nabbing Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s finance minister — the first time authorities of the new Iraq (news - web sites) arrested a top official of the old regime. American forces touted the arrest of Hikmat Mizban Ibrahim al-Azzawi as an example of the Iraqi-U.S. cooperation for which they are striving. News of the arrest came as Marines started...

KUWAIT (Reuters) - A prominent Iraqi exile said on Saturday only a democratically elected government should be allowed to sign the massive contracts needed to reconstruct the country. Former Foreign Minister Adnan Pachachi criticized Washington over its plans for a U.S.-led civilian authority to hand out reconstruction contracts without the approval of an elected Iraqi government. No one has the right to commit Iraq to obligations and costs," he told a news conference in Kuwait. "Only an Iraqi government can do that. A parliament should also endorse the agreements." The U.S. government on Thursday awarded Bechtel Corp. a $680-million-contract to...

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...

BAGHDAD: One Iraqi man sought wheat for his bakery. Another wanted to replace furniture stolen from his school so it could reopen. Others came seeking an end to violence in their neighbourhoods. Soldiers from the US Army's 101st Airborne Division hold daily meetings with Iraqis in south Baghdad - part of their work to rebuild that part of town. "America is a democratic country. We want to be like America," one Iraqi man said Friday, sitting in the front row of at the community meeting in a south Baghdad library. He asked Brig Gen Benjamin C Freakley if a few...

Iraqis Demand U.S. Withdrawal in Baghdad By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent Iraqis exercised new freedoms and jockeyed for power in a new era Friday, marching in Baghdad to demand the quick withdrawal of the same American troops and tanks that toppled Saddam Hussein. "No to America, no to Saddam, our revolution is Islamic," chanted the demonstrators who spilled into the streets after prayers at one 1,300-year-old Sunni Muslim mosque. Tens of thousands of Muslim protesters poured out of mosques and into the streets of Baghdad, calling for an Islamic state to be established.

BAGHDAD (AFP) - American marines had packed their bags and were ready to vacate the Iraqi capital late Friday with the army's Fourth Infantry Division (4ID) expected to move in and take over control of the city, military sources said Friday. "We're expecting to leave tonight," said one marine, who did not want to be named. "The 4th ID will be in charge by Saturday." The marines who had packed their bags are based around the Palestine and Sheraton hotels where the international press corps and marine hierarchy are based. They were expected to be part of a gradual...

More Than 900 Iraqi War Prisoners Freed 1 hour, 6 minutes ago Add Top Stories - AP to My Yahoo! By PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - Coalition forces released more than 900 Iraqi prisoners, beginning the process of sorting through the thousands detained in the month-old war, a U.S. defense official said Friday. "We stated from the beginning that we don't want to hold anybody any longer than absolutely necessary," said Maj. Ted Wadsworth, a Pentagon spokesman. "The process of sorting people to determine their status has begun." Those released were determined to be noncombatants, he said, meaning...

<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>

IWANIYA, Iraq, April 17 — They were trained in the art of war and came to Iraq to fight. But now that the regime has been toppled, Army Special Forces soldiers in Diwaniya have found themselves on an entirely different and, in many ways, more difficult mission. They are trying to rebuild the city. It is a battle against chaos instead of bullets. The Green Berets have had to wade into angry crowds. They have mediated between rival tribes locked in blood feuds. They have tried to hold together the city's thin threads of social order, not always with...

Iraq: Thousands Protest U.S. 'Occupation' In Baghdad Baghdad, 18 April 2003 (RFE/RL) -- Several thousand Iraqis marched today through Baghdad, chanting anti-American and anti-Saddam Hussein slogans. A leading cleric, Ahmad al-Kubeisy, today criticized what he called "the American occupation" of Iraq during the Friday prayer at the Abu Hanifa mosque in Baghdad, and called on U.S. forces to leave soon. After the sermon, thousands of people demonstrated against both the U.S. presence in Iraq and against Hussein. Ahmad Chalabi, the leading figure of the Iraqi National Congress, an emigre opposition organization, said today in his first public appearance in Baghdad,...