September 4, 2003	Thursday	Rajab 6, 1424

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WASHINGTON, Sept 3: Conceding that the United States needed international community’s help in Iraq, President George Bush shifted strategy on Wednesday and sought to give the United Nations a larger role in the occupied country.

And in Baghdad, new ministers were sworn in and were set to get down to work in what the US-led administration claims is another step towards handing the reins of power back to Iraqis.

Amid daily and often deadly attacks on US troops and other targets in Iraq, Mr Bush directed US Secretary of State Colin Powell to open negotiations at the UN Security Council on a resolution designed to build a wider multinational force.

The United States said on Wednesday it would insist an expanded multinational force for Iraq fell under its command.

“The US will remain the commander...,” Mr Powell told reporters in Washington as US officials talked of a draft UN resolution that envisaged elections to restore power to Iraqis.

Washington had previously appeared to have ruled out any bid for a new Security Council resolution encouraging more countries to contribute troops or other aid to help stabilize Iraq.

But four major vehicle bomb attacks in a month and the refusal of some countries to contribute troops without a UN mandate seem to have swayed Mr Bush into changing course.

“We heard from the president that he is willing to follow the UN track, a larger responsibility for the UN, and that is very good,” Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said on Wednesday after a breakfast meeting with President Bush in Washington.

“It is important that more countries are being involved in Iraq as far as military support is concerned. The second element is we have to work on democracy and the new structure of policymaking on Iraq,” Mr Balkenende said.

The United States has about 150,000 soldiers in Iraq and is supported by about 21,000 others, 11,000 of them British.

RECONSTRUCTION: A wider UN role could also make it easier to gain reconstruction funds at a donors’ conference in Madrid next month, as many contributors are uneasy about the US-led occupation.

At a preliminary meeting in Brussels on Wednesday that involved the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and others, the US-led authority in Baghdad sought to allay concerns about security.

“The US wanted to explain that, in their view, the situation was less worrying than people think and getting better every day,” said a European diplomat.

CABINET: The 24 men and one woman who will act as ministers in Iraq’s interim government until elections were sworn in on Wednesday at a ceremony in Baghdad.

“I swear by Almighty Allah to do my utmost to serve and protect Iraq, its people, land and sovereignty, and Allah is my witness,” said each minister in turn.

The new cabinet, unveiled on Monday, is divided up among the country’s various communities, with 13 ministries going to Shias, five to Sunnis, five to Kurds, one to the Turkmenis and one to the Christians.

It will report to the Governing Council, approved in July by US administrator Paul Bremer. Each ministry will also continue to be supervised by a US-appointed adviser, most of whom are American.

Mr Bremer will retain overall authority until an elected government is in place, a move scheduled for next year at the earliest.

The Arab League welcomed it as “a step in the right direction”.

But in Egypt a government newspaper branded the ministers a group of fugitives following US orders who had set up opposition groups to Saddam Hussein in “nightclubs” abroad.

“Iraqi Government Run by American Advisors,” read one banner headline in a Lebanese newspaper.

NEW SCIRI CHIEF: The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) on Tuesday named the brother of its slain leader, Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al Hakim, the new head of the country’s largest Shia political party.

Abdel Aziz, a member of Iraq’s interim Governing Council, taking up the mantle of leadership after his brother Mohammad Baqer was killed in a car bombing last Friday in Najaf. —Reuters/AFP