WASHINGTON, April 10 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Jay Garner, the retired general who is to run Iraq's postwar interim administration, will only go to Baghdad when the last shot is fired.

The 64-year-old Garner, who has been called a governor-in-waiting, the new sheriff of Baghdad and various other epithets, has been keeping a low profile in Kuwait while the U.S. Army finishes its work and the U.S. administration wrangles over how to run Iraq.

"They'll move to the Baghdad area at that point that the Baghdad airport is sufficiently secured to take a number of civilians who are not in a combat situation," U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Wednesday, April 10.

General Richard Myers, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Garner did not need to be in Iraq to work, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

"It really doesn't matter where General Garner and his group are because they are, in fact, acting now," he said.

"The restoration of water supplies in several southern towns, the restoration of electrical power grids, he's the one that is overseeing that work."

Ahmed Chalabi, an Iraqi opposition leader, urged U.S. authorities to send Garner as soon as possible to sort out the country's problems after the U.S.-led war.

The three-star general has also come under fire for his links to defense industry and his ardent pro-Israel stance.

Garner is on leave from SY Technology to head the U.S. Defense Department's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) for Iraq, working under the head of the U.S. Central Command, General Tommy Franks, who will be Iraq's immediate post-war ruler.

Speaking a day after a team from Garner's ORHA arrived in the port of Umm Qasr, a spokesman said the first priority was to bring in aid, The Independent newspaper reported.

Aid organizations believe Iraq is too unstable to send in their workers any time soon, and similar dangers will be faced by Garner and his staff, who are preparing to arrive in Iraq from Kuwait.

When “international administrators” have arrived in similar post-conflict situations, from Kosovo to Afghanistan, one of their main problems has been to find trustworthy local people to work with them among the hundreds who will immediately besiege their offices.

Asked whether ORHA would deal with members or officials of Saddam Hussein's Baath party, Major Jurgensen said that's :one of the decisions that is still being negotiated

The experience of Afghanistan has shown, however, that temporary solutions adopted in haste can be difficult to undo later. The old warlords enlisted to help oust al-Qaeda and its Taliban protectors have proved hard to shift, and are now among the worst problems for Hamid Karzai's interim government, which has little control of the country outside the capital.

Iraq, with the world's second-largest oil reserves, is potentially a far richer nation than Afghanistan. But more than a decade of sanctions have left the oilfields dilapidated and deprived of investment, while 60 percent of the population is dependent on food handouts from the U.N. Restoring the oil industry and creating employment opportunities for Iraqis will require not only sophisticated management but massive amounts of financial aid.

Garner, a personal friend of Rumsfeld, was an assistant deputy chief of staff during the 1991 Gulf War, and directed several major Defense Department programs including the Patriot anti-missile system.

Notably, Garner was President Ronald Reagan's point man, as the commanding general of the army's Space and Strategic Defense Command, on the "Star Wars" missile defense scheme.

His admirers describe him as compassionate and people-oriented, and his role in the resettlement of Kurdish refugees to northern Iraq following the Gulf War has been emphasized.

While naming a military man to a civilian role has a precedent in Japan after World War II, General Douglas MacArthur, it appears unprecedented to have someone in charge of rebuilding a country who until recently headed a company that was partially responsible for its destruction.

Garner became president of SY Coleman after retiring from the army in 1997 with a near total lack of experience in the private sector.

The high-technology defense contractor, acquired by defense giant L-3 Communications last year, makes missile guidance systems.

The choice of a man so closely tied to the military industrial complex to run the civil administration of post-war Iraq has raised questions of a possible conflict of interest.

David Kirp, a professor of ethics at Berkeley University, said that Garner was a "charming example" of American indifference toward the Iraqi people and showed the lack of foresight by the U.S. administration.

A retired lieutenant colonel of the space command, Biff Baker, alleged that Garner used his Pentagon connections to win 100 million dollars in contracts for SY Coleman.

Garner, who denied any wrongdoing, countered with a defamation suit, and the matter was settled out of court in January.

More troubling for some are Garner's stated political views in total support of Israel and his ties with the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, which have prompted accusations of Zionism from some Arab critics.

He has been regularly denounced by the Council on American-Islamic Relations for his views.