Two Saddam aides seized, Iraqis demand government

10.00am

BAGHDAD - Iraqi mosque preachers sought to calm tensions with US troops today and demanded that the United States establish a government to restore order after President Bush declared the war all but over.

While grappling with postwar chaos, the US military said it was holding two more of deposed President Saddam Hussein's top aides, including one who helped direct his weapons programs.

It named him as Abdul Tawab Mullah Hwaish, head of the military industrialisation ministry, which oversaw the development of weapons of mass destruction in the 1980s.

Hwaish was No. 16 on the US list of 55 most wanted Iraqis. He was taken into custody yesterday, along with Taha Mohieddin Ma'rouf, an Iraqi vice president and member of Saddam's Revolutionary Command Council, and No. 42 on the list.

The continuing hunt for Saddam and his inner circle is one reason why Bush has stopped short of formally ending the war ostensibly fought to rid Iraq of banned weapons, whose existence Saddam denied. US and British forces have yet to find any.

Many Iraqis are happy at Saddam's removal but have made clear they want US troops to leave as soon as possible.

"To America and its allies we say: where are your honeysweet promises? Now is the time to fulfil them," Sheikh Ahmad al- Issawi said in a sermon at Baghdad's Abdel-Qader Kilani mosque.

"Where is the government?" he asked. "Install a government as quickly as possible even if it is an emergency government.

"Maintain security and protect public and private possessions from looters and get public services, water and electricity, back to normal," Issawi added.

Rumsfeld says Iraq far from safe

Speaking a day after Bush declared that US-led forces had prevailed in the military phase of the war, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in London that insecurity remained rife.

"It would be a terrible mistake to think that Iraq is a fully secure, fully pacified environment. It is not, it is dangerous," he said after meeting British Prime Minister Tony Blair at the end of a victory tour to Iraq and Afghanistan.

"There are people who are rolling hand grenades into compounds. There are people that are shooting people, and it is not finished, so we ought not to leave the world with the impression that it is," he said.

Rumsfeld's talks with Blair covered a push for faster reconstruction and humanitarian efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In Washington, a US official said the Bush administration had chosen Paul Bremer, a former diplomat who headed the State Department's counter terrorism efforts, to be the civilian administrator guiding reconstruction efforts in Iraq.

The official said Bremer would supplant retired general Jay Garner as the top US civilian official in the country.

The European Union, meanwhile, said it had agreed in principle for the return of diplomats to Iraq.

"We agreed, all 25 countries, to give the order for the return of the charges d'affaires of our countries to Iraq," said Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou, whose country currently holds the EU presidency.

In the tense western city of Falluja, a Muslim prayer leader called on townsfolk not to fight US soldiers who killed 15 demonstrators earlier this week and then suffered seven wounded in a reprisal attack on the main US base in the town.

"I want to tell you, to tell all of the people here in Falluja, not to attack Americans. If you do they will kill you," one prayer leader told worshippers at a mosque opposite the US post. The mayor of Falluja held "peace talks" with a major at the US camp, American soldiers said.

Bitterness in Falluja

But anger still simmered on the streets, where some said they preferred Saddam's rule to the US "occupation."

In Tehran, a hard-line Iranian cleric predicted that Iraqis would launch a Palestinian-style revolt against US troops.

"Iraqis will eventually reach the conclusion that the only way to oust Americans is an intifada," Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati told Friday prayer worshippers at Tehran University.

The United States says it does not want Iraq to become a fundamentalist Islamic state like its Shi'ite neighbour Iran.

Iraqis are dismayed at the postwar breakdown in security and angry about shortages of water, power and other basic services.

"Water at the moment is critical," said Veronique Taveau, spokeswoman for the UN Office of the Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq. Securing food warehouses was also a high priority.

Taveau was one of 21 UN international staff who returned to Baghdad on Thursday to assess humanitarian needs.

International aid agencies appealed on Friday for the United Nations to be given a key role urgently in rebuilding Iraq, where they said disease, hunger and anarchy were spreading.

Britain and the United States have dragged their heels in defining what role the world body should play in postwar Iraq.

"It is essential that the United Nations have a central role in facilitating the creation of a transitional Iraqi authority," said a joint statement from Oxfam, Islamic Relief, Caritas, Cafod, Christian Aid, Action Aid and Save the Children.

A vessel with 14,000 tons of rice docked in the southern port of Umm Qasr, the largest to arrive by sea and the first shipment by the UN World Food Program since the war began.

About 60 per cent of Iraqis depended on food handouts from the UN oil-for-food program before the conflict. Taveau said they probably had enough food to last until mid-May.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq