It’s Hussein’s Palace, but That’s Gen. Franks Smoking the Cigar

Gen. Tommy Franks, who orchestrated the U.S.-led assault that deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, made his first visit to Baghdad on Wednesday to congratulate his troops and consult with his commanders.

Franks smoked a cigar in one of Hussein’s opulent former palaces -- outfitted with gold bathroom fixtures, a crystal-and-gold chandelier and marble floors -- and declared that essential services would be restored for Iraqi citizens in coming days.

In another sign of a possible easing of tensions in the region, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said he expected to travel to Damascus, the Syrian capital, soon for talks with President Bashar Assad. Powell’s comments came as the Syrian government took action to close its border with Iraq and turn away at least some Iraqi officials trying to seek refuge in Syria.

A senior U.S. official said Wednesday that Syria had turned back Abul Abbas, the Palestinian who masterminded the 1985 Achille Lauro hijacking. Allied troops took Abbas into custody late Monday near Baghdad. And the Syrians have agreed to turn over a senior member of Hussein’s government who tried to enter the country, the official said, although he refused to name the Iraqi.

A sense of jeopardy appeared to lift elsewhere Wednesday, as the Bush administration lowered the national alert status in the United States from orange to yellow, and one prominent Iraqi exile returned to a more secure Baghdad. But in Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, residents complained of violence by Kurds who had entered the city from the north.

Franks’ trip to Baghdad was billed as a morale booster for the troops and a chance to confer firsthand with his military leaders.Franks flew from his base in Qatar to Kuwait, where he boarded a C-130 cargo plane for the trip to Baghdad’s international airport, which still shows damage from the U.S. assault. The largest crater in its runway is 60 feet across and 15 deep.

Leaving the plane, Franks raised a clenched fist in greeting to troops waiting at the airport and then took a motorcade into Baghdad.

In the Iraqi capital, the commanders toured the palace and Franks greeted many of the U.S. troops on duty there, hugging some of them and shaking many hands.

He talked to enlisted troops, officers and military police alike: “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for coming.”

Franks and his commanders acknowledged the postwar problems apparent throughout the country -- including persistent violence and looting and a desperate shortage of electricity, water and medical care in the heavily bombed capital -- but they celebrated the Iraqi leader’s departure from power.

“One thing for sure: The regime of Saddam Hussein is no longer in charge of Iraq,” Franks said.

While Franks was visiting the troops, Pentagon officials tallied the war’s cost at $20 billion so far and growing at a rate of $3.5 billion to $4 billion a month.

That doesn’t include the several billion dollars it will cost to bring combat troops back home, Pentagon comptroller Dov Zakheim said. He offered no estimate on the cost of stabilizing and rebuilding Iraq.

The Pentagon also said the interim U.S. military administration would start giving Iraqi civil servants a $20-a-head, one-time emergency payment within days. The U.S. military said it hoped to get Iraqi oil fields pumping at two-thirds of their prewar levels within eight weeks.

Franks’ visit to Baghdad came as prominent Iraqi exiles were beginning to arrive in the capital. Among those vying for a role in the new government is Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress and a favorite of the Pentagon, who on Wednesday became the first significant Iraqi exile to travel to Baghdad since Hussein’s government was overthrown.

Abdelaziz Hakim, a top Iraqi Shiite opposition leader and deputy head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, arrived in the eastern Iraqi city of Al Kut, ending 23 years in exile in Iran, Hakim’s son said. He was apparently the first Iranian-backed Shiite leader to return to Iraq.

As the U.S. continued to play a role in Iraq, it also made it clear that it wants to have a say in the broader region.

On Syria, Powell said “lots of messages” had been relayed between Washington and Damascus in recent days through U.S. envoys, as well as through Britain, France and Spain, to try to dampen escalating tensions.

“I would expect to travel to Syria again to have very candid and straightforward discussions with my foreign minister colleague [Farouk Shareh] and with President Bashar Assad,” Powell said in an interview with Associated Press.

He did not say when he might make the trip. State Department sources said Powell had been considering a swing through the Middle East after the war, possibly later this month or in early May.

Powell is not the only top Bush administration official headed for the region. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld plans a visit to Baghdad soon, Pentagon officials confirmed, and will be followed by Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Dates were not disclosed. Rumsfeld will not travel to Syria, U.S. officials said.

Powell said Washington had recently provided specific information to the Assad government about high-level Iraqis who should be returned to Baghdad to face trial on war crimes charges and other offenses.

“We have been candid with the Syrians, and we have also made clear to the Syrians that we don’t think it would be in their interest to be a draw for people who are trying to either get out of Iraq or get out of other places in the world and find a safe haven. Syria does not want to be a safe haven in the aftermath of Operation Iraqi Freedom,” Powell said.

A senior State Department official said Damascus appeared to have heeded the warnings. “There are some signs that maybe Syria is coming around. They may have begun playing the role we want them to play, at least on Iraq,” he said.

In Baghdad, Franks called the opulence of Hussein’s palace an example of his “oil-for-palace program,” a reference to the U.N. oil-for-food program in which Iraq was supposed to use money from oil sales to fulfill the needs of average people. Instead, the money went to the Iraqi leadership, Franks said. He said he expected essential services in the country, where electricity and water are still shut off in many places, to be restored soon.

“I think over the past week, we have seen water being turned back on in this country,” he said. “I think we have seen power being turned back on in this country. I think we’ve seen hospitals going back to work all over the country. I actually believe it’ll be better seven days from now by quite a bit than it is today.”

Franks said he did not expect that the gathering of his team of commanders at one of Hussein’s palaces would anger Iraqis by suggesting that the U.S. had simply swapped rulers.

“I think there’s an expectation that our forces will be here operating in this country for some period of time in order to provide more stability so a new government chosen by the Iraqi people can take its place. Where we happen to be at any particular point in time won’t generate any ill feeling at all,” he said.

Franks praised the teamwork of the services of the U.S. military and its allies and the contributions of average soldiers, sailors and Marines.

“I have never seen a more joint effort brought about by more joint-minded professionals,” Franks said.

Vice Adm. Timothy Keating, a member of Franks’ command team, added: “It took a year to plan and a month to execute. That’s better than the other way around.”

But sources of trouble remain for U.S. forces in the country. In Tikrit, which was once the source of Hussein’s power base, residents were complaining bitterly to Marines on Wednesday that Kurds who had swept in from the north were robbing their homes. The top Marine general in Tikrit promised tribal elders Wednesday that he would try to stop the violence, thus placing his troops in the middle of long-standing ethnic animosities.

At a meeting with two dozen grim-faced tribal elders, Brig. Gen. John Kelly promised to investigate the claims and to send Marine patrols into neighborhoods where Kurds have been accused of robbery and other crimes.

In the exchange, Kelly, whose headquarters are in Hussein’s former summer palace, said he needed help finding the remaining snipers who are shooting at the Marines.

“Give a little, get a little. That’s how it works,” Kelly said. “If they want presence [of Marines], we’ll give them presence.”

Iraqis who fled their homes when they heard the Marines were converging in Tikrit began returning Wednesday, crossing a bridge damaged by Iraqi army attempts to destroy it and thus slow the Marine offensive.

“They’re afraid the Kurds are going to slaughter them,” said Staff Sgt. Michael Ackerman, assigned to bridge duty. “It’s a dog-eat-dog world in those neighborhoods.”

“They want our homes, everything,” one Iraqi said as he waited with his wife, six children and mother-in-law for a chance to cross the bridge into Tikrit.

Marines, meanwhile, discovered a bomb in a car driven across the bridge by a Kurd. The discovery was made only after the Marines went to rescue the driver from being beaten by a group of Iraqis.

Marines also found what may be the single largest cache of military arms discovered in Iraq: up to 100,000 AK-47 assault rifles stored in a hospital on the edge of Tikrit. The rifles -- along with mortars and other weaponry -- suggested to Marines that Hussein had hoped that his forces in Tikrit would wage more of a battle against the Americans. Instead, the Republican Guard troops melted away and left the fighting to ragtag paramilitary groups.

“I guess he ran out of people before he ran out of guns,” one Marine said.

In Washington, the Department of Homeland Security said the national alert status had been lowered after an assessment by the U.S. intelligence community. But Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge warned that Americans must remain vigilant.

In Athens, European Union leaders said they wanted to work together and with the United States to rebuild Iraq. They were preparing a statement on ways the United Nations and the European Union could work in Iraq in a manner acceptable to Washington, which has made it clear that it will not let the U.N. take the leading role in rebuilding the country.

The first meeting on the future Iraqi government was held Tuesday in the southern city of Nasiriyah, and a second was scheduled for 10 days later at a site not yet determined, U.S. military officials said.

Other members of the coalition led by the U.S. and Britain have sought to stabilize key regions in Iraq so aid can be brought in. The Australian government will send three planeloads of medical supplies to Baghdad, part of an overall humanitarian aid package estimated at $60 million, Pentagon officials said.

Over the weekend, two Kuwaiti Air Force C-130s flew into Baghdad’s international airport with 24 tons of medical supplies for hospitals and health clinics. Also Wednesday, U.S. special operations troops, backed by about 40 Marines, raided the Baghdad home of microbiologist Rihab Taha, who ran Iraq’s secret biological laboratory in the 1980s and was known to U.N. weapons inspectors as “Dr. Germ.” Troops brought out boxes of documents and three men with their hands raised. Taha’s whereabouts were not immediately known.

Meanwhile, the hunt for Hussein and other high-ranking Iraqi officials continued with little luck. The main prize for U.S. troops so far has been the arrest of Palestinian guerrilla leader Abbas.

In the Achille Lauro hijacking, American retiree Leon Klinghoffer was killed and his body was thrown overboard. His two daughters want Abbas tried in the United States. But Italy, where he was convicted, said it would seek his extradition, and the Palestinian Authority said he should be released.

Porubcansky reported from Doha and Hendren and Wright from Washington. Times staff writer Tony Perry in Tikrit contributed to this report.