Iraq Council Leaders Pressing For Power

Council Leaders Pressing For Power
Iraqis Urge Quick End to Occupation
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, September 15, 2003; Page A01


BAGHDAD, Sept. 14 -- Five key leaders of Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council have seized upon the debate over a new U.N. Security Council resolution on Iraq to advocate a quick end to the American occupation and a transfer of power to Iraqis, fueling the first significant tensions between the Bush administration and its political allies here.

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The U.S. civil administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, is concerned that the council, whose members he handpicked, still does not have sufficient standing in the eyes of ordinary Iraqis. Many people here regard the five leaders, who returned after years living outside the control of Hussein's government, as American puppets who enriched themselves while in exile or in autonomous Kurdish areas.

"They're not ready for more power," said one U.S. official familiar with the council, noting that the diverse body was created to advise the occupation authority on policy issues and supervise the national bureaucracy, not govern a nation of 25 million people.

snip

A restoration of sovereignty, said Chalabi, "would make the Americans look like liberators again" and would reduce attacks against U.S. forces. "Iraqi people," he said, "don't understand the logic of occupation."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10631-2003Sep14.html

Look's like the hand-picked council wants their independence faster than the occupying US is willing to allow.

That's a fair question...when can they be allowed to rule themselves?

And the profits there from, duly recorded in the respective corporate balance sheets.