Garner to Meet Prominent Iraqis to Map out Future

28/04/2003| IslamWeb

Retired U.S. general Jay Garner, in charge of administering postwar Iraq, meets the country's leading political, religious and ethnic figures in Baghdad on Monday for talks to map out Iraq's political future. Garner was expected to address 300 to 400 prominent Iraqis -- a bigger gathering than an initial meeting near the southern city of Nassiriya on April 15, held just days after U.S.-led troops ousted Saddam Hussein and his government.

U.S. officials want the meeting to pave the way for the creation of an Iraqi government and overcome resentment of the U.S. troops who are viewed by many Iraqis as occupiers.

Garner hopes the process of forming a government will start by next weekend.

"The Nassiriya meeting was a very, very first step...I think we're going to see more of an indigenous representation (at the second meeting)," Barbara Bodine, coordinator for central Iraq under Garner, told reporters in Baghdad.

The fall of Saddam created a power vacuum which rival Iraqi groups and self-proclaimed leaders have been quick to fill.

On Sunday, U.S. forces detained an Iraqi exile who had declared himself mayor of Baghdad. Central Command said Mohammed Mohsen Zubaidi had been acting without U.S. authority and blocking efforts to rebuild Iraq.

Boycotts

U.S. officials hope groups which boycotted the initial meeting will join in the Baghdad discussions.

An Iran-based Iraqi Shi'ite Muslim group, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which boycotted the first meeting, said it would probably attend.

But it said its participation depended on Washington allowing Iraqis to choose their own interim government.

"It is very likely that the SCIRI will be represented in the meeting in Baghdad if certain conditions are met," Mohammad Hadi Asadi, a SCIRI political committee member, told Reuters.

A representative of the Iran-based Dawa party said it would not attend. Moqtada al-Sadr, a prominent Shi'ite religious leader from the southern city of Najaf, also said he would not be there.

Bodine said Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress, had also been invited.

Chalabi is widely seen as a Washington favorite despite Garner's own declaration that he is not the U.S. candidate to lead Iraq. He sent a representative to the first meeting.

Chalabi told CNN in an interview on Sunday he would decide later whether to attend.

Jordan Condemns Chalabi as a Divisive Figure with No Credibility

In Amman, Iraq's neighbor, Jordan, on Sunday condemned Chalabi as a divisive figure with no credibility.

Jordan's Foreign Minister Marwan al-Muasher predicted that Chalabi, who returned to Baghdad after the war with the backing of the Pentagon after decades in exile, would not be the choice of the Iraqi people to head a post-Saddam government.

"I think if the Iraqis are given a free choice, he would not emerge as the leader of Iraq. If he is pushed as the leader of Iraq, he will be seen as a U.S. agent," he said on NBC's Meet the Press.

Jordanian courts convicted Chalabi in absentia in 1992 on fraud and embezzlement charges after the 1989 failure of the Bank of Petra, which he founded and ran, and sentenced him to 22 years in prison.

PHOTO CAPTION

Retired US General Jay Garner, the director of the office of reconstruction and humanitarian assistance to Iraq (AFP/File/Odd Andersen)