Tension mounts as US pledges to build new Iraq

THE United States yesterday pledged to build a new Iraq from the ashes of war, but faced mounting challenges as ethnic tension simmered in the north and Shi’ite Muslims staged an anti-American protest in the capital.

Retired US general Jay Garner, heading the agency charged with rebuilding Iraq after the devastating war to oust Saddam Hussein, flew in to Baghdad and vowed to work flat-out to repair the damage.

As he toured a hospital and a power plant, about 2,000 Shi’ite Muslims staged an anti-American protest, accusing US troops of having arrested one of their leaders, Muhammad al-Fartusi. US military officials said they were not aware of the arrest but were checking further.

“No, no to colonialism,” the demonstrators chanted in the protest outside the Palestine Hotel where some US military units are based.

In the northern city of Kirkuk, Arab families said they had been ordered to leave their homes as armed Kurds laid claim to property and sought revenge for atrocities under Saddam Hussein.

Dozens of Arab men and women crowded outside the main administrative building in the centre of the oil-rich northern city of 700,000 to complain about mistreatment including looting and threats by Kurds.

In Moscow, a senior Foreign Ministry official said Russia, a veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council, would insist on UN arms inspectors declaring Iraq free of weapons of mass destruction before sanctions against it could be lifted.

Washington is pushing for quick scrapping of the 12-year-old sanctions but Russia, France and several other European and Middle Eastern countries fear that once they are gone the United Nations will have no leverage over Iraq’s future.

The US failed to win Security Council approval for the war, and has made clear that it believes its victory gives it the right to dominate the shaping of the new Iraq.

Mr Garner, head of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), began his four-day tour with a visit to Baghdad’s Yarmuk hospital, ransacked by looters.

Zayed Abdul Karim, the head of the hospital, led Garner through dark, dusty corridors littered with broken glass. The hospital has had no electricity for two weeks since Baghdad’s power was cut during the US air bombardment. The lights came back on in parts of eastern Baghdad on Sunday night, hours before Mr Garner’s arrival.

Mr Garner said his priority was to restore basic services such as water and electricity “as soon as we can”.

“What we need to do from this day forward is to give birth to a new system in Iraq. It begins with us working together, but it is hard work and it takes a long time. We will help you as long as you want us to,” he said.

Some doctors at the hospital were suspicious of US intentions. “I want to cry, because these are only words,” a doctor who gave her name as Iman said after listening to Mr Garner. “Saddam Hussein was an unjust ruler, but maybe one day we could have got rid of him, and not had these foreigners come in to our country.”