WASHINGTON, May 4 (IslamOnline.net) - U.S. President George W. Bush appointed career diplomat Paul Bremer civil administrator of Iraq with larger authority than Jay Garner’s, a retired army lieutenant general overseeing the country’s post-war reconstruction, a U.S. official said on Sunday, May 4.

Bremer, the former head of the State Department’s counterterrorism office, “will enjoy larger authority than Garner, including helping form a new national government in Iraq” after the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime, Al-Jazeera satellite channel quoted the official as saying.

The official, who refused to be identified, said that the White House would issue an official statement of Bremer’s appointment and the nature of his work next week. He made no mention of the timing of the career diplomat’s arrival in Baghdad to take office.

The American official did not confirm whether Garner would play a specific role under Bremer’s supervision.

But a press report said that Bremer's selection, disclosed Wednesday, April 30, by a senior U.S. official, will put him in charge of a transition team that includes retired Army Garner and Zalmay Khalilzad, the special White House envoy in the Gulf region.

Bremer left the State Department, where he was an assistant to former secretaries William Rogers and Henry Kissinger, to join Kissinger Associates, a consulting firm studded with both Democrats and Republicans that held top U.S. government posts. Currently, Bremer serves as chairman and chief executive of Marsh Crisis Consulting company.

According to the report, Bremer's imminent appointment counts as a win for U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in a behind-the-scenes struggle over who will run Iraq.

Powell's State Department has been fighting with the Defense Department under Donald Rumsfeld over how Iraq will be governed and how long the U.S. presence will last.

Defense officials are said to be pushing the candidacy of Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi to head Iraq's future transitional government, which they want to install quickly.

State Department officials have been questioning Chalabi's legitimacy and are pushing for a conference to help form an Iraqi government, a process that is expected to take several months.

Chalabi was sentenced in absentia to 20 years by a Jordanian court after convicted of bank fraud have a scant base of support among the Iraqis.

Political observers said that the appointment of Bremer “would be better” than putting a former military official directly linked to Pentagon in power.

Many of Iraqis took to the streets since the U.S. military drive in their country, calling the U.S. forces should pull out amid larger scenes of anarchy and lawlessness rampant in occupied Iraq.

Seven U.S. soldiers were moderately injured when two unidentified men lobbed two grenades over the wall of their offices in western Iraq one day after.

In another related development, former Iraqi Foreign Minister Adnan Pachachi, tipped to play a major role in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, is expected to go to Baghdad within 48 hours to assess the situation and meet with other political leaders, a source close to him said.

Pachachi was in Amman Sunday on his way to the Iraqi capital, the source told Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

Az-Zaman, a London-based Iraqi newspaper which began publishing in Baghdad this week following the fall of Saddam, earlier said Pachachi would arrive in the Iraqi capital on Sunday.

The octogenarian Pachachi has been living in the United Arab Emirates capital of Abu Dhabi since 1970 but also spends time in London.

He declined to join a six-man leadership council set up in February by major groups that opposed Saddam's regime and went on instead to rally liberal Iraqi "independents," announcing the birth of Independent Iraqis for Democracy (IID) in London the following month.

Pachachi, the only Sunni Muslim offered a seat on the council, the others are Shiites, like the majority of Iraq's population, and Kurds, will meet in Baghdad with the five other members of the collective body but is still "considering" whether to join it formally, the source close to him said.