December 30, 2003	Tuesday	Ziqa’ad 6, 1424

WASHINGTON, Dec 29: Attacks on the US-led occupation and an accelerated timetable for Iraq’s return to sovereignty have prompted the United States to scale down its ambitious agenda for remaking that country, the Washington Post said on Sunday.

The daily said US officials had in the past few months dropped plans to privatize state-owned businesses and backed off efforts to disarm militias under the control of ethnic and political factions.

“The Americans are coming to understand that they cannot change everything they want to change in Iraq,” Adel Abdel-Mehdi, a senior leader of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq told the daily.

The US administrator for Iraq and his deputies are now focused on forging compromises with Iraqi leaders and combating a persistent insurgency in order to meet a July 1 deadline to transfer sovereignty, the Post said.

“There’s no question that many of the big-picture items have been pushed down the list or erased completely,” a senior US official told the daily.—AFP