“That isn't going to happen,” Rumsfeld

WASHINGTON , April 25 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld ruled out an Iran-style religious government in Iraq , as the U.S. administrator of Iraq , Jay Garner, said Thursday, April 24, that the formation of a post-Saddam government would start next week.

"If you're suggesting, how would we feel about an Iranian-type government with a few clerics running everything in the country, the answer is: That isn't going to happen," Rumsfeld said, reported The Washington Post Friday, April 25.

A senior administration official said President Bush wants a government in Iraq that is democratic, multiethnic, maintains Iraq's territorial integrity, has no weapons of mass destruction and is at peace with its neighbors.

Shiites in Iraq are the majority Islamic sect, and they disagree on whether to embrace a secular government or an Iran-style theocracy. Some U.S. officials worry that the Islamic government in Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, may seek to influence Iraq's postwar reshaping, The Post said.

Interviewed in his Pentagon conference room, Rumsfeld said the Iraqi people, after decades of political repression, need time to adjust to a new reality and to determine for themselves how to organize a new government and elections.

Bush made a similar point Thursday in a speech to workers at a tank factory in Ohio.

"One thing is certain: We will not impose a government on Iraq," Bush said. "We will help that nation build a government of, by and for the Iraqi people."

However, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said religious Muslims should not be precluded from governing Iraq.

"There are Islamic countries that are having elections, Pakistan. Turkey. It's happening," Powell said in an interview Thursday with Al-Arabiya, a television station based in Dubai .

"Why can an Islamic form of government that has as its basis the faith of Islam not be democratic?" he asked.

"There are some people who say, well, because you're practicing Islam you can't allow people to choose how they will be governed politically. I don't think Islam presents that," he said.

Due to travel soon to Iraq, Rumsfeld also said that U.S. and British forces were searching for many more former members of the Saddam Hussein government than the 55 on a "most wanted" list.

"In fact we have a list of some 200," he said. "That original list was purposely kept low at the outset because we wanted to separate the worst people from the regime, hoping that others would come forward."

Rumsfeld said more of the top 55 have been captured in the past day or so than have been announced. He gave no details and said that once the identities were verified they would be made public.

U.S. forces in Iraq have taken custody of Tariq Aziz, the former deputy prime minister and the most visible Iraqi leader other than Saddam.

Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Thursday night the arrest of another top Iraq official, in Syria, would be announced shortly.

Graham, at a session of the Council on Foreign Relations, declined to identify the Iraqi, saying only that he had held one of the most sensitive positions in the Iraqi government and was arrested in the past 24 hours.

The senator accused the Bush administration of "failed diplomacy" on Iraq and said U.S. relationships and alliances should be rebuilt. He also called for including the United Nations in rebuilding Iraq.

New Government Pledged

Garner said an Islamic government was incompatible with democratic principles

In Baghdad, Garner said the formation of a post-Saddam government would start next week, but he failed to say who would be serving on it or how they would be chosen, reported British daily The Independent.

There also appeared to be confusion over what would happen if an Islamic government was voted to power in a future election.

While insisting that America and Britain wanted to let the people of Iraq decide their own fate, General Garner maintained that an Islamic government was incompatible with democratic principles.

His British deputy, Major- General Tim Cross, said Iraqis must be allowed to vent their fury after decades of repression. But he added that he did not want to see this lead to a fundamentalist regime similar to neighboring Iran. He insisted that the Shiite majority in the country would not want this either. "I genuinely believe that many of these people want to be part of a democratic Iraq," he said.

But the assertions of General Garner and Maj-Gen Cross were made against a background of rising religious and nationalistic fervor, highlighted in the million-strong Shiite pilgrimage at Karbala, which ended with demands for the establishment of an Islamic state and threats of a jihad against the "American occupiers".

Islamic administrations have already been established in a series of towns and villages in the Shiite heartland of the south and east, with clerics stepping into the vacuum left by the collapse of the regime. The Shiite religious authority, the Hawza, based in the holy city of Najaf, claims it is coordinating the takeovers.

America has claimed that Shiite Iran is encouraging the militancy of its co-religionists, although this was strongly denied by the Iranian government. General Garner declared that "the coalition will not accept such interference", without elaborating on what kind of action was envisaged.

The retired general held talks Thursday with 60 Baghdad academics and community leaders on Iraq's future. Iraqis who attended the meeting, which lasted about an hour, said they had pressed General Garner to restore essential services and law and order as quickly as possible to the battered capital.

"He said, 'We are trying to do our best'," reported one of the participants, the writer and retired English teacher Youarash Haidoua. "We need security, we need peace, we need law." An American official described the tone of the meeting as "spirited and sometimes emotional", according to The Independent.

General Garner said: "I think you'll begin to see the governmental process start next week, by the end of next week. It will have Iraqi faces on it. It will be governed by the Iraqis."

The American administrator urged government employees to return to work. Asked how the process of "deBaathification" would be carried out, he said "cronies of Saddam" would become targets and a list of suspects prepared by the Pentagon would be consulted.

He denied that the American government was backing Ahmad Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress, who was flown to Iraq on board an American military aircraft and has stayed behind the iron gates of Baghdad's Hunting Club, guarded by American forces.