U.S.-Iraq Synergy Growing, Official Says

Responding to the growing debate over the political transition in Iraq, the Bush administration said Wednesday that the United States would intensify its coordination with the Iraqi Governing Council.

Although some top Iraqis said they agreed with the U.S. rather than the French position on the rate of transferring power, discussions over the shape and speed of the transition are complicated by disagreements among the Iraqis themselves, a senior administration official said Wednesday.

“There are 25 members of the Iraqi Governing Council, and what we do not have is a unified view among them,” the official told reporters traveling with President Bush.

Key members of the Iraqi council, who plan to take their case to Capitol Hill, are calling for the U.S.-led coalition to turn over greater control of security and physical reconstruction.

The critical policy split between the council and the United States is on the third and most sensitive issue -- full control of governing Iraq.

With France pressing hard for an imminent hand-over of power to a “provisional” Iraqi government, the Bush administration has been trying to win wider international support during talks at the opening session of the U.N. General Assembly this week by pledging to give Iraqis more responsibility.

“Iraqis are taking more and more responsibility for the building of Iraq on practically a daily basis,” the official said. “More and more decisions are being made -- in a collaborative, consultative fashion and that’s going to continue, and it’s probably going to accelerate.”

At the United Nations, three top representatives of the Governing Council said they were in agreement with the seven-step process outlined by the U.S.-led coalition -- and challenged France’s position.

“The French are being more Iraqi than the Iraqis,” Hoshyar Zebari, foreign minister of the Iraqi Governing Council, said after a news conference at the U.N. Adnan Pachachi, Iraq’s former U.N. envoy and now a Sunni representative on the council, said many on it are “not very happy” with the French.

In Baghdad, another prominent Iraqi suggested that the government of French President Jacques Chirac may have ulterior motives.

“The problem with President Chirac and the French is that we don’t know what exactly they’re after. Our fear is that they are using Iraq as a scapegoat to settle their differences with the U.S. and Britain and the rest of the Arabs,” said Iyad Allawi, head of the Iraqi National Accord, who is set to assume the rotating Governing Council presidency next month. “We wish they had talked to us before advocating something,” he added.

The council is prepared to accept a transition that would include writing a new constitution, conducting a census, holding town hall meetings to explain the process and then a referendum, formation of political parties and finally an election for a new government before the hand-over of power, Pachachi told the joint news conference with Zebari and Ahmad Chalabi.

Pachachi said they hoped to have a constitution completed by May.

“We have no disagreement with the United States government,” Chalabi, a Shiite Muslim, told the news conference at the U.N. “We are not at odds with the U.S. We are working to achieve the common objectives.”

Chalabi, however, has been the most outspoken in demanding a faster hand-over. Zebari, a Kurd, said he hoped that the entire hand-over could be completed within a year -- although he said any timetable would be contingent on security.

Yet there continues to be a debate among Iraqis over the issue of how much responsibility they have in running their country versus how much actual sovereignty they should be granted in weeks rather than months.

In testimony Wednesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, L. Paul Bremer III, the U.S. civilian administrator in Baghdad, also conceded that some members of the governing council favor an immediate hand-over of full sovereignty. But he said Iraqis are ill-equipped to take control.

“No appointed government, even one as honest and dedicated as the Iraqi Governing Council, can have the legitimacy necessary today to take on the difficult issues Iraqis face as they write a constitution and elect a government. The only path to full Iraqi sovereignty is through a written constitution, ratified and followed by free, democratic elections,” Bremer said.

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Times staff writer Maura Reynolds contributed to this report.