WASHINGTON, Oct 12: The United States is mulling the possibility of installing a military occupation government in Iraq if it becomes necessary to oust President Saddam Hussein by force, Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Friday night.
The proposal, which would install an occupation government in Baghdad along the lines of those imposed in post-World War II Germany and Japan, is one of several continency plans being worked on as US officials prepare for possible military action in Iraq, Powell said.
“Should it come to that — and the president hopes that it does not come to that, but should it come that — we would have an obligation to put in place a better regime,” he said in a interview with National Public Radio.
“We are obviously doing contingency planning and there are lots of different models from history that one could look at: Japan, Germany,” Powell said, confirming the main elements of a report in Friday’s New York Times.
However, he stressed that the idea was only one of many and that no decision had been made either on an invasion of Iraq or what Washington would do in the aftermath.
“I wouldn’t say that anything has been settled on, even though the New York Times story reflected one particular model,” Powell said.
An Iraqi opposition leader gave a qualified welcome to the possibility of a US-installed occupation government, Britain’s Guardian daily reported on Saturday.
“We are concerned first with the liberation of Iraq,” said Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the opposition Iraqi National Congress, who told the left-of-center daily he would prefer an interim Iraqi government to be established in the immediate aftermath of Saddam’s fall.
Chalabi, who was visiting Washington on Friday, said it was “very, very clear it is going to be a huge development in the Arab world,” and said he did not think that a large-scale prolonged US military presence would destabilize the region.
Powell and White House spokesman Ari Fleischer both said that, should such a military occupation become necessary, US troops would not remain in Iraq any longer than necessary.
“It is never our intention to go and stay in a place and to impose our will by the presence of our military forces,” Powell said.
Fleischer, speaking earlier, said the United States would not abandon Iraq or leave it without a viable government should a military invasion be necessary, but neither would it stay forever.
“The US would not cut and run,” Fleischer said. “We want a rapid transfer of power to the Iraqi people. We will maintain the presence required to maintain peace and stability.”
The Times reported that Washington had a plan for the occupation of Iraq that calls for a US-led military government and war-crime trials for Iraqi leaders.
The plan includes a transition to an elected civilian government in Iraq that could take months or years, it reported, citing unnamed senior administration officials.
The report coincided with a vote by Congress to authorize President George W. Bush to use military force to eliminate Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction if its president Saddam Hussein ignores United Nations demands to do so.
The occupation plan would scale back the initial role for Iraqi opposition forces in a post-Saddam government, the paper said, adding that US officials wanted to avoid the chaos and in-fighting that have plagued Afghanistan since the Taliban was overthrown.
The plan would put an American military commander in charge of Iraq — perhaps General Tommy Franks, commander of the US forces in the Gulf — for a year or more while the United States and its allies searched for and destroyed Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, it said.
“For as long as the coalition partners administered Iraq,” the daily said, “they would essentially control the second largest proven reserves of oil in the world, nearly 11 percent of the total.—AFP