When will US hand over Iraq?

Since before the war to depose Saddam Hussein began, President Bush has said that the United States would stay in Iraq as long as necessary and not a day longer.

But with international leaders including United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan supporting an accelerated timetable for the turnover of power to Iraqi leaders, and with the American public increasingly anxious for a lower American profile in Iraq, the US is under pressure to give up the role of "occupier" sooner rather than later.

With backing from some members of the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, the French are calling for transfer of power to the Iraqis within as soon as one month. Despite US declarations that a power transfer should wait until the country has stabilized, several of Iraq's most powerful new leaders are demanding that Washington cede at least symbolic sovereignty to their body even before the building blocks of a new Iraq, such as a constitution, are in place. And in a reprise of UN wrangling before the war, France is also insisting that a US-backed Security Council resolution, designed to clear the way for a large infusion of foreign troops and cash, put Iraq's political future in UN hands.

The US insists a hasty turnover risks more chaos later - if fighting were to break out, for example, among Iraqi groups that don't consider quickly installed leaders a legitimate government.

As the UN Security Council debates the merits of French demands, ordinary Iraqi citizens are more concerned with the day-to-day issues of personal safety, jobs, and electricity supplies than the niceties of institution building.

"In principle, everyone on the [Iraqi] Governing Council is in favor of a sovereign Iraqi state, but the conditions are not suitable," says Noshirwan Mustafa, deputy leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. "We need some time to establish an administration to take over" and to restore security.

Others argue that only a transfer of power to Iraqi authorities could help stem the increasingly violent opposition to occupation forces. "Sovereignty comes before security, not the other way round" says Entifadh Qanbar, spokesman for the Iraqi National Council (INC) leader Ahmed Chalabi. "The more we delay, the more ground the terrorists will gain among ordinary people."

US Secretary of State Colin Powell, in Baghdad for a two-day trip that ended Monday, said Sunday he had told the 25 member Governing Council "in very direct terms" that the US intended to resist the French calls. "The only way that gets us where we have to be is with a deliberate process that first and foremost builds up the institutions of government," he said. "The worst thing that could happen would be for us to rush this process too quickly, before the capacity for governance is there, and the basis for legitimacy is there, and see it fail."

Secretary Powell's visit was directed as much at an increasingly worried American public as at Iraqis.

Polls show that while Americans still generally support the Bush administration's Iraq policy, a growing minority disapproves of the postwar management and is uneasy about prospects for a long-term and undefined occupation.

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