US officials remain in Saddam’s palace despite handover

US authorities may have handed power to an Iraqi government, but hundreds of Americans will still occupy one of Saddam Hussein’s largest palaces in central Baghdad for several months.

Iraqis, led by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, are fully in charge of the nation of 25 million people, although some 160,000 US-led troops will remain to help with security.

Despite the outward trappings of a handover, however, some things remain unchanged, including the presence of several hundred US, British and other foreign nationals in the heavily fortified Green Zone which dominates central Baghdad.

In the same building from which Bremer administered the country for the past 13 months, US diplomats, lawyers, accountants and secretaries will run the US mission in Iraq and the Iraqi Reconstruction and Management Office.

Many of the staff that have spent the past year or more working for Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority will change name tags and be working for the diplomatic mission one of the largest in the world.

John Negroponte, newly appointed US ambassador to Iraq, will occupy a separate embassy building, but the bulk of the embassy's staff will "overflow" into Saddam's former republican palace.