April 5, 2003	Saturday	Safar 2, 1424

WASHINGTON, April 4: The White House said on Friday it would consider military action in Iraq a success even if US forces failed to find President Saddam Hussein.

While finding president Saddam — either dead or alive — would be “helpful”, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said President George Bush’s “definition of victory” was removing the current government from power and eliminating the country’s alleged weapons of mass destruction.

Mr Fleischer said newly-aired tapes of the Iraqi president were being analysed by the United States and that it was too soon to draw “firm conclusions one way or another” about whether the Iraqi leader is alive or dead. “We don’t know,” he said.

If he eludes US forces, he would join the ranks of America’s most wanted, a list now topped by Osama bin Laden.

Mr Fleischer made the comments as Iraqi television broadcast a speech apparently by President Saddam urging the people of Baghdad to “strike the enemy with force” and predicting victory over the invading US and British troops.

Iraqi television later showed footage of what it said was Saddam, dressed in a military uniform, visiting residential areas of Baghdad on Friday. But there was no way of verifying when the film was taped.

“What’s important in the president’s judgment is that the regime be disarmed and that the regime be changed so the Iraqi people can be free and liberated,” Fleischer said.

“Certainly any clear resolution about Saddam Hussein’s fate helps provide some clarity to that,” Fleischer said. “But the definition of victory is those two factors that I cited, that the president has cited.”

“In the bigger scheme of things, it really doesn’t matter because whether it is him or whether it isn’t him, the regime’s days are numbered and are coming to an end,” he added.

Fleischer said Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair would meet next Tuesday in Northern Ireland to discuss the Iraq war and reviving the Middle East peace process.

INTERIM AUTHORITY: Though Fleischer said no dates have been set, Bush administration officials are considering quickly installing an interim Iraqi authority in areas under the control of US-led forces while the government in Baghdad is cut off from the rest of the country.

Several hundred US government officials are already encamped in Kuwait waiting on the word to go into Iraq to set up a post-war Iraq “interim authority” under the leadership of a retired general, Jay Garner.

A top contender to oversee Iraq’s oil industry in the short-term is Phillip J. Carroll, Royal Dutch/Shell Group’s former chief executive in the United States, US officials said.

Carroll was chief executive of Shell Oil, the company’s US subsidiary, from 1993-98. He then joined engineering and construction company Fluor Corp as chairman and CEO, retiring last year. Fluor is among the US companies being considered for post-war contracts in Iraq.

Timothy Carney, a former ambassador to Sudan, is preparing to run Iraq’s ministry of industry, while Robin Raphel, former ambassador to Tunisia, has been pencilled in to run the ministry of trade, the officials said.

Kenton Keith, a former ambassador to Qatar, would run the ministry of foreign affairs, US officials said.

The US military and its allies envision operating the Iraqi government for at least weeks, but probably longer, during the immediate aftermath of the Iraq war.

US officials, aware that they stand to suffer severe international criticism for running what would amount to a puppet government, said they want to involve Iraqis in the running of the government as soon as possible.

The hope is to quickly restart a number of non-political agencies like agriculture and water and others that would not be stacked with Saddam loyalists.

The United States wants to assure the United Nations that it will have a role in the reconstruction of post-war Iraq but what role it would be and how quickly it would start has not yet been determined.—Reuters