The 24 members of the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) are to hold closed-door meetings this week on what Iraq’s new government should look like and its future relationship with the United States.
The talks come after U.N. special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi’s visit to Baghdad, which concluded last week with recommendations for a caretaker government, but before his expected return to Iraq in two weeks.
Topping a list of questions to be discussed are who will best represent the country of 25 million and how to balance Iraqi political independence with the need for U.S. forces to maintain order.
“Everything depends on security — investment and political matters, including the transfer of power,” said IGC member Mahmoud Othman.
The United States, he said, should give whatever government emerges the authority and backing to do its job.
“The [new government] needs to have some forces, so it is capable of making law and order in the country,” he said in a telephone interview from Baghdad.
Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said the U.S.-appointed council wants U.S. forces to remain in the country, but as yet no status-of-forces agreement governing the terms of the deployment has been signed.
Upon completing a week of meetings in Iraq, Mr. Brahimi said the caretaker government could comprise “Iraqi men and women known for their honesty, integrity and competence,” led by a prime minister.
“There will also be a president to act as head of state and two vice presidents,” Mr. Brahimi said.
It is not clear how the Iraqi government will enforce its laws when the only competent force in the country remains the coalition military that answers to the United States.
“Their sovereignty will be limited,” said Jim Dobbins, director of the Rand Corp. Center for International Security and Defense Policy.
The June 30 deadline, he said, would represent a legal change, but practical change will only take place gradually. “June 30 will not make Iraqi institutions more effective,” he said.
“I expect the U.S. and coalition forces will operate in Iraq under a U.N. Security Council resolution, and that will be the legal basis for their activity.”
The Governing Council, Security Council and the United States first will have to bridge their differences on what authority coalition forces will have to hunt down terrorists and provide security — differences that appear to have widened since the military crackdown on insurgents in Fallujah.
“The transition will be gradual one, which will take place as Iraq develops the capacity to provide security for its own people,” said Mr. Dobbins, who is also a member of a Council on Foreign Relations task force on Iraq.
With only four positions of power open under the latest U.N. proposal, discussions are heating up among Iraq’s political and religious power brokers over who will get which seats in the new government structure.
“None of [the IGC members] are happy with the U.N. because the council is going to dissipate,” said Azza Karam, an expert in political Islam who follows Iraq closely.
Mr. Othman acknowledged that “some people think the council should be enlarged,” rather than downsized.
According to Mrs. Karam, the surge in violence is increasing the pressure on the negotiators to reach agreement. But she said there were “questions being raised on the Iraqi street whether or not this [new] institution is just a replacement for the United States.”
For Mr. Othman, a Kurd, a lot depends on the right people being chosen, “not just people from different ethnic groups without qualifications.”
“They should be very much concerned about qualifications — a mixture of politicians and technocrats,” he said.
“Next week, we are supposed to have some meetings to discuss this between us,” he said, adding that Mr. Brahimi had emphasized the need to have a government ready to go by the end of May or beginning of June — four weeks before the turnover.
But Mr. Othman said that unless the security situation improved, the turnover could be affected.
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