BAGHDAD, May 11: The US administrator for Baghdad vacated her post on Sunday as Washington prepared a major overhaul of its leadership team in Iraq following sharp criticism of the sluggish pace of reconstruction in the country.
Officials said that Barbara Bodine, who was charged with running Baghdad and central Iraq, would be returning after less than three weeks work in the country to take up a new job in Washington.
The Washington Post also reported that Jay Garner, the retired US general who up until now has been the leading US civil administrator in Iraq, will return home with his aides in the upcoming weeks.
The reshuffle coincided with the arrival in Doha of Paul Bremer, a career diplomat and counter-terrorism expert who is to take over the role of the top US civil administrator from Garner. No explanation was given for Bodine’s abrupt departure, while the Washington Post said she did not know the reason for the reassignment, which came in a late-night call on a phone that had been installed only hours before.
The leadership shake-up comes amid continued frustration among many Iraqis over the halting progress made so far in rebuilding the country, over a month after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime on April 9.
Iraq remains largely lawless with crime rampant on the streets, while the World Health Organisation said last week it feared a cholera epidemic was breaking out in the southern city of Basra.
Uncollected rubbish has been piling up high in Baghdad, while many of the city’s five million residents are still without running water and electricity.
Returning after 23 years of exile in neighbouring Iran, the leader of the main Shia faction on the council continued his homecoming tour on Sunday, urging supporters in the southern city of Nassiriyah to reject any “imposed government”.
Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim, the 66-year-old head of the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI), a day earlier made a triumphant return to the city of Basra, where he was welcomed back by tens of thousands of cheering supporters.
“We refuse imposed government. We are afraid neither of America nor England. Would the Americans like to be governed by the British? So how can you expect us to be governed by the Americans?”, Hakim told a crowd of thousands in Nassiriyah. US Marines in the city were visibly anxious at the appearance of Hakim, whom some officials in Washington fear will bring an Iranian-style Shia theocracy to Iraq.
“I was absent for 23 years, sacrificing for God and for you, to defend you from the regime,” said Hakim, bursting into tears. “These sacrifices have been to raise the flag of Islam.”
With the whereabouts and fate of Saddam and his immediate family still a mystery, Syrian President Bashar Assad said Damascus has allowed the relatives of top Iraqi officials from the regime into the country but not the leaders themselves.
“Some of them came to the border. They weren’t allowed to come in,” Assad told Newsweek.
“We allowed families to come to Syria, women and children. But we were suspicious of some of the relatives — that they had positions in the past and were responsible for killings in Syria in the ‘80s,” Assad told the magazine.
Meanwhile the oil ministry’s acting head said Iraq could resume oil exports by next month, when production may return to one million barrels per day.
The executive director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said here that there was no wide-spread hunger in Iraq.
“There is no widespread hunger across the country. Most families have enough food for three to five weeks,” James Morris told reporters.
“The distribution worked well” under the ousted regime of president Saddam Hussein, he said. The regime was “very generous over the years.”
Morris said the WFP would start on June 1 distributing 480,000 metric tons of food aid a month across the country through 44,000 distribution points already in place.
A massive fire broke out at Baghdad’s main telecommunications facility in the centre of Baghdad, an AFP reporter said.
One person covered in soot was escorted by local residents down the fire escape and out of the building. It was not immediately known if any other people were inside.
A vast plume of grey and black smoke poured into the sky and could be seen from across the city. — AFP