Wolfowitz: at Least 6 Months to Create Iraqi Govt.
Sun April 6, 2003 10:29 AM ET
By Philip Barbara
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Paul Wolfowitz, the U.S. deputy defense secretary, said on Sunday that it will take more than six months for an Iraqi government to be created to run the country after President Saddam Hussein's regime has been defeated.
Asked on Fox News Sunday whether the Iraqis could set up a new government as quickly as the Kurds set up a territory in northern Iraq they began governing in 1991 after the first Gulf war, Wolfowitz said it would take longer

"Six months is what happened in northern Iraq. This is a more complicated situation. It will take more than that," he said.

Wolfowitz has been involved in the Pentagon's creation of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), which is preparing within days to begin operations in the southern Iraq port city of Umm Qasr.

Headed by retired Army Gen. Jay Garner, who reports to U.S. war commander Gen. Tommy Franks, the new office will spearhead humanitarian assistance and reconstruction.

Over European objections, the Bush administration has ruled out a leading role for the United Nations in immediate post-war Iraq, saying that Washington and its allies had earned top status after having given "life and blood" to the war effort.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had urged Bush to name Iraqi exiles to an interim authority in southern Iraq, but White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice has insisted that any authority include Iraqis currently living in the country, as well as prominent exiles.
Rice's stance could end an internal dispute over the make-up of the new Iraqi authority, which could be installed even before Saddam's government is toppled.
Wolfowitz told Fox the United Nations can be particularly helpful in bringing humanitarian assistance to Iraq, but that a major effort must be made to establish a new government run by the Iraqis.
"The U.N. can be a mechanism for bringing that assistance to the Iraqi people ... but our goal has to be to transfer authority and operations of a government as quickly as possible, not to some other external authority but to the Iraqi people," he said.

Repubblica
Washington, 17:31
Iraq, Bush a Blair: governo ad interim affidato a iracheni

Il governo ad interim iracheno, che potrebbe essere installato prestissimo, sarà guidato da iracheni "dell'interno" e non "da esuli": lo ha assicurato, scrive Newsweek, il presidente americano George W. Bush al premier britannico Tony Blair, fin dall'incontro che i due hanno avuto a Camp David il 27 marzo.
Newsweek, che anticipa i contenuti di un articolo pubblicato domani, scrive, addirittura, che il governo provvisorio "sarà dominato" da iracheni "dell'interno": "Bush non s'immagina neppure di paracadutare gente da fuori dell'Iraq per governare l'Iraq".

Se la posizione indicata da Newsweek sarà confermata nel vertice di domani e martedì in Irlanda del Nord tra Bush e Blair, ciò segnerà una vittoria per le tesi espresse dal segretario di Stato Colin Powell su quelle portate avanti dal segretario alla difesa Donald Rumsfeld e dal consigliere per la sicurezza interna Condoleezza Rice.(red)