Washington — The United States will thwart efforts to create a pro-Iranian Islamic theocracy in Iraq, the U.S. Defence Secretary warned yesterday.
Attempts backed by Tehran to "transform Iraq in Iran's image will not be permitted," Donald Rumsfeld said. "We will not allow the Iraqi people's democratic transition to be hijacked by those who might wish to install another form of dictatorship."
As a rising chorus of clerics — mostly from among the long-oppressed Shia Muslims who form the largest single group in Iraq — demand that U.S. and British troops leave the country now that Saddam Hussein's regime has been toppled, the White House is caught between its promise that Iraqis could chose their own government and the possibility that many might opt for an Iranian-style theocracy.
"The Shias in the country are Iraqis and the Shias outside the country from Iran are Persians," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "My guess is that the Iraqi people would prefer to be governed by Iraqis and not Persians."
Despite a long and bitter war between the two countries in the 1980s, Iraqi Shiites, especially in the south, have close religious ties to the ruling clerics in Tehran.
By far the best-known and probably most powerful Iraqi opposition figure is Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir Hakim, whose Tehran-based Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq represents the most powerful challenge to U.S. hopes of a multiethnic democracy in a federal state.
"The government of Iran has encouraged people to go into the country [Iraq] and . . . they have people in the country attempting to influence the country," Mr. Rumsfeld said yesterday.
The White House is grappling with creating an interim Iraqi administration and determining what to do with the growing number of senior figures from the former Iraqi regime now in custody.
In an interview broadcast on Thursday, his first since the war started, U.S. President George W. Bush told NBC News that U.S. intelligence had "some evidence" to believe that Mr. Hussein might have been killed or seriously injured in the first decapitation strike that launched the war. That, the President suggested, might explain why many of the worst-case scenarios — such as oil fields set alight, chemical weapons used and Scud missiles fired at Israel — did not occur.
The Bush government hopes to have an interim Iraqi administration in place by next week, but it may be little more than a group of technocrats and local leaders. The transition to a post-Hussein Iraqi government and the shape and nature of that government could take months.
At gatherings inside and outside Iraq, efforts are under way to find consensus on what type of government is needed.
In Madrid yesterday, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar — a staunch Bush ally — opened a meeting of more than 100 representatives of Iraqi opposition parties in exile.
"Democracy is not the preserve of certain countries or certain cultures, democracy in the [Middle East] region is essential for new Arab generations," Mr. Aznar said.
But inside Iraq, the credibility of exile groups, especially those that operated in the West, remains deeply suspect.
In mosques across Iraq yesterday, mullahs unveiled varying and often contradictory visions of Iraq's future.
"We have to be ready in the long term to establish our own Islamic state," said Asaad al-Nasseri, a prominent Shia cleric who just returned from exile in Syria, speaking to a crowd in Nasiriyah.
Shiites account for about 60 per cent of the Iraqi population.
Iraqi Shiites are organizing committees, doling out funds to pay salaries, collecting looted property and sending militias to secure hospitals and electric plants.
In Baghdad, Sunni Muslim Imam Sheik Moayed al-Aathami proposed an Iraq more in line with the Bush administration's hopes. "We want Muslim people equal in rights and duties — Kurds, Arabs and minorities. We want Muslim people with no sectarian sensitivities," he said.
<UFtail>With a report from AP
