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U.N. Official: Iraqis Ready to Turn on U.S. Troops
PARIS (Reuters) - Prominent Iraqis who despised Saddam
Hussein will take up arms against U.S. forces if life under
occupation does not quickly improve, a senior U.N. official
said in outspoken criticism of Washington’s postwar policy in
Iraq.

Ghassan Salameh, adviser to the special U.N. representative
to Iraq Sergio Vieira de Mello, told the French weekly Le
Nouvel Observateur in an interview published Wednesday that the
United States had bungled its victory since toppling Saddam.

"Many influential Iraqis who initially felt liberated from
a despised regime have assured me that they will take up arms
if the coalition troops do not arrive at a result. Time is
short," the magazine quoted Salameh as saying.

He did not spell out which prominent Iraqis had warned of
an uprising against the U.S. and British-led coalition. The
U.N. mission, he said, made a point of meeting senior figures
and took credit for pushing the U.S. administrator to give
executive powers to the appointees on Iraq’s new Governing
Council.

He said protests over energy shortages in the southern city
of Basra showed that Washington’s British allies, who have
generally been seen as more active in bringing Iraqis into
administering their region, also faced difficulties.

Southern Iraq, dominated by the long oppressed Shi’ite
Muslim majority, had hitherto been fairly calm. But prominent
Shi’ite clerics have made clear they are impatient to be left
alone, at long last, to run their own affairs.

Salameh warned that ordinary people, frustrated by the lack
of basic services four months after the fall of Saddam, could
rally behind ideological opponents of the occupying forces.

"In reality, the population is very surprised. They don’t
understand how such a level of efficiency during the war could
be followed by such a lack of efficiency in ’peace,"’ he said.

Salameh accused the U.S. government of promoting an
ideological agenda and of making "errors of judgment."

This included a purge of members of the dissolved Baath
party, which affected thousands of qualified professionals with
little or no ideological attachment to Saddam. These were now
being replaced by "proteges of local factions," he said.

Posted by: snellenr 2003-08-13
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=17600