Envoy Details His Plan for Iraq

U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said Tuesday that despite the ongoing violence in Iraq, a caretaker government could be named by the end of May to prepare for the planned June 30 transfer of sovereignty from the U.S.-led authority.

Brahimi sketched his vision for Iraq’s transitional government to the U.N. Security Council in New York on a day that news stations across the globe televised live images of an American warplane raining cannon fire on insurgents’ positions in Fallouja and the U.S. reported the deaths of more than 60 militiamen loyal to a radical Shiite cleric during battles near the holy city of Najaf on Monday.

Brahimi has called for peaceful solutions to the standoffs in Fallouja and Najaf, saying Tuesday that the U.S.-led forces know “better than everyone else that the consequences of such bloodshed could be dramatic and long-lasting.”

But although the planned hand-over of power is bound to be difficult and dangerous, Brahimi argued before the Security Council that it remains “doable.”

“Is it possible for the process to proceed under such circumstances? Will it be viable? Will it be credible?” he asked rhetorically. “There is no alternative but to find a way of making the process viable and credible.”

Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister who was persuaded by the Bush administration and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to create a blueprint for the tricky political transition in Iraq, is due to return to Baghdad at the beginning of May. There, he will consult with leaders of the U.S.-led occupation and the Iraqi Governing Council and other leading Iraqis to identify a group of people who would be given the responsibility for day-to-day administration of the country until elections can be held, as scheduled, next January.

Meanwhile, in Washington on Tuesday, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John D. Negroponte underwent a three-hour hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on his nomination as ambassador to Iraq.

Negroponte, asked about the level of authority the U.S. will hand over to Iraq, said that Iraqis will have “a lot more sovereignty than they have right now,” including control over the nation’s ministries and its foreign policy. But Negroponte said that American-led military forces would continue to oversee Iraqi security. “They’re going to be free to operate in Iraq as best they see fit,” he told the Senate committee.

In Fallouja on Tuesday, explosions rocked a neighborhood that had long been seen as an insurgent stronghold. A camera crew traveling with the Marines on the city’s outskirts broadcast the dramatic live images.

Despite the high drama and display of firepower, U.S. officials said that the strike in the northern part of the Sunni Triangle city -- by an Air Force AC-130 gunship -- did not signal the end of a 17-day cease-fire. Officials described the attack as a routine night operation targeting insurgent positions and possible weapons caches in the city’s Jolan district.

“This was one of our quieter nights,” said Marine Maj. Joseph Clearfield. Seven Marines in his 2nd Battalion have been killed and 65 wounded during the three-week standoff in Fallouja.

The cease-fire limits Marines to “defensive” actions, including destroying weapons stashes and attacking hostile fighters seen positioning themselves to attack.

Commanders said that they suspect weapons caches were hit Tuesday, accounting for large secondary explosions that reached 500 yards into the sky.

There was no word of casualties in Tuesday’s battle, which began just before 11 p.m. and lasted less than an hour. Two sites about 150 yards apart appeared to be targeted in a pair of sweeps by the aircraft.

While explosions marked Fallouja’s night, U.S. officials said that Iraq’s other major hot spot -- Najaf, about 100 miles south of Baghdad -- was relatively quiet Tuesday after some of the worst fighting to hit the area.

U.S. officials said about 64 militiamen were killed Monday during two engagements near the neighboring town of Kufa. There were no known U.S. casualties.

The fighting began when militiamen loyal to Muqtada Sadr, a militant Shiite cleric, attacked a U.S. patrol and later opened fire on an American tank, U.S. officials said.

The Army called in air support and demolished a militia checkpoint east of the Euphrates River, with heavy militia casualties, according to the military and reports from the scene.

The U.S. command has called on Sadr’s forces to remove weapons from Najaf’s mosques and holy places immediately. More than 2,000 U.S. troops are massed outside the town.

Sadr representatives have denied storing weapons in mosques. A spokesman for the cleric called Tuesday’s confrontations a great victory for Sadr’s Al Mahdi militia.

The airstrikes in Fallouja came after a day of sporadic skirmishes between insurgents and Marines in the northwestern corner of the city, which has seen sometimes heavy fighting despite the cease-fire.

The bombardment thrust tongues of flame and heavy showers of sparks into the night sky, followed shortly thereafter by plumes of black smoke. Illumination flares helped turn evening into day.

From mosques in the neighborhood, prayer leaders speaking through megaphones called on residents to remain calm and marshaled fire brigades to put out blazes ignited by the attacks, Arab-language media reported.

U.S. officials said that an AC-130 -- outfitted with sophisticated night optics and an assortment of weapons -- had patrolled the skies of Fallouja nightly, seeking insurgent targets and cease-fire violators.

During Tuesday night’s bombardment, however, insurgents for the first time attempted to use antiaircraft weapons, though without success, U.S. officials said. Combatants in Iraq are known to possess stockpiles of surface-to-air missiles of varying degrees of sophistication. Since last year, at least four Army helicopters have been shot down in the greater Fallouja area.

On Monday, an intense two-hour battle erupted in Fallouja in which one Marine died and 15 were wounded. Scores of guerrillas were thought to have been killed by gunfire or buried when a tank toppled a mosque’s minaret that insurgents had used to spray machine-gun fire on Marines.

Hours before the gunship strike Tuesday, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the top coalition military spokesman, had painted a relatively upbeat picture of the situation in Fallouja -- despite what he called ongoing cease-fire violations by the insurgents.

“The negotiations, in the mind of the commanders on the ground, are continuing to go well,” Kimmitt said, referring to talks between U.S. officials and Iraqi politicians, clerics and other intermediaries aimed at ending the standoff that began when Marines encircled the city April 5, days after the killing and mutilation of four American civilian contractors.

“At this point we don’t think that putting deadlines, ultimatums on the table [is] very helpful,” Kimmitt said.

At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that the negotiations were “worth a try.”

Nevertheless, Rumsfeld added, “I think that, realistically, if you’ve got some very tough people in a city that are terrorists, some of them foreign terrorists, some of them senior intelligence -- Iraqi intelligence types and Baathist remnants -- that you have to expect that they’re not going to be terribly cooperative.”

Kimmitt said Tuesday that one of the cease-fire accord’s major requirements -- that guerrillas turn in their heavy weapons -- had clearly not been met.

Moreover, a plan for U.S. and Iraqi security forces to mount joint patrols has been delayed. The tenuous security situation and the need for additional training of Iraqi officers accounted for the postponement, officials said.

Although the desire to “put an Iraqi face” on security procedures in Fallouja remains high, Marine officials want to avoid a poor showing by the first joint patrols. The patrols are tentatively scheduled for areas where there has been little or no fighting and Marines have established a strong presence.

Some Fallouja officials have voiced doubts about putting Iraqis and Americans together to patrol the volatile city, preferring that Iraqis do it alone.

Mayor Mahmoud Ibrahim Juraisi said he feared that the joint patrols would be attacked. He also suggested that only 100 of 700 members of the Iraqi police assigned to Fallouja remained in the city. Many quit after the Marine advance began this month.

The Marines view the joint patrols as a step toward making Fallouja safe enough for officials and contractors to commence a U.S.-led rebuilding plan.

The U.S. has earmarked hundreds of millions of dollars for Fallouja’s schools, hospitals, infrastructure and businesses. But none of the money can be spent while it is unsafe for Americans and outsiders to venture into the city, officials said.

Under Brahimi’s plan for a transitional government, a group of technocrats would be appointed, including a prime minister, a president and two vice presidents, to ensure ethnic balance.

Government members, he told the Security Council, would be restricted from running for office in January and would refrain from making laws or oil contracts.

He said the new government should be in place in time to reach agreement with the United States on sovereignty -- and its potential limits -- before June 30.

Members of the Governing Council and some U.N. diplomats voiced concern Tuesday that an incomplete hand-over of sovereignty would have repercussions.

“Sovereignty is sovereignty. Either you are pregnant or you are not pregnant,” said Yahya Mahmoussani, the Arab League ambassador to the U.N. “You can’t divide it. If you want the violence to end, there must be full sovereignty.”

Meanwhile Tuesday, U.S. officials announced plans to set up a special commission to compensate victims of Saddam Hussein’s regime. The plan was still “embryonic,” but there would be an Iraqi government commission, said Dan Senor, spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition.

Hussein, being held as a prisoner of war at an undisclosed location, was visited Tuesday by officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Officials declined to provide details of the visit.

Farley reported from the United Nations, Perry from Fallouja and McDonnell from Baghdad. Special correspondents Raheem Salman in Baghdad and Saad Fakhreldeem in Najaf and Times staff writers John Hendren and Sonni Efron in Washington contributed to this report.