Leadership is shuffled at U.S. reconstruction agency in Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- One top U.S. occupation official left her post Sunday, another was preparing to leave, and a new administrator arrived in the region, ready to take over, less than three weeks after their newborn reconstruction agency opened for business in the postwar chaos of Baghdad.

The shake-up at the top comes as the agency makes inroads to restore law and order and government functions, but as many ordinary Iraqis complain about persistent insecurity and the slow pace of resuming basic services like power and water.

The developments came with some unsettling news Sunday for Iraqi rebuilding: Oil production, vital for recovery, may resume more slowly than thought, and it may take two more months to get full electricity back in Baghdad.

As if to underscore the challenges facing the Americans, new arson fires broke out Sunday, sending palls of smoke billowing over a city wracked by looting and other lawlessness since a U.S.-British invasion toppled President Saddam Hussein's government last month.

The departed official, former U.S. ambassador Barbara Bodine, a St. Louis native, was coordinator for central Iraq, including Baghdad, within the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance.

The office thus far has assembled some 800 specialists from U.S. government agencies and allied governments to organize aid, reconstruction and the establishment of a new government for Iraq.

An ORHA spokesman, U.S. Army Maj. John Cornelio, confirmed that Bodine was leaving Baghdad on Sunday. But the agency didn't explain the reason for her swift departure, just two weeks after she chaired a get-acquainted meeting with top bureaucrats of the former Baghdad city administration.

The Washington Post reported Sunday that Bodine, former U.S. ambassador to Yemen, was being reassigned as deputy director of the State Department's political-military division.

No replacement for her has been named yet, Cornelio said. The replacement for chief U.S. administrator Jay Garner, on the other hand, has been known for more than a week.

L. Paul Bremer, a longtime State Department aide, flew to the Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar this weekend as he prepared to take over in Baghdad as head of ORHA. Bremer, 61, whose new agency is essentially a military administration reporting to the U.S. Central Command, flew to Qatar with the Pentagon's top soldier, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers.

Spokesman Cornelio said Garner also was in Qatar, presumably meeting with his successor. The 65-year-old retired Army lieutenant general, who arrived in Baghdad on April 21, had said his assignment here would be short-term, but it had been expected to last three months.

Now, Garner has said, he will depart after making a "good handoff" to Bremer -- probably by late May. Bremer is expected in Baghdad this week.

In its three weeks here, the reconstruction agency has made some progress in restoring order and services since U.S. troops took control of Baghdad around April 9.

The Americans have deployed some Iraqi police in Baghdad's streets, have made nominal $20 emergency salary payments to draw many bureaucrats back to government offices, and have inaugurated a political process through which Iraq's anti-Saddam factions may produce an interim government by June.

But many ordinary Iraqis complain loudly that the U.S. occupation has failed to restore basic services and security.

Baghdadis are getting less than half the electrical power they need. That, in turn, has limited the treatment and pumping of clean water. Iraqis say that looters and other criminals also still prey on ordinary citizens and their property.

On Sunday, the interim head of the national Electricity Commission, Kareem Hasan, said that full power may not be restored for two months until repairs are completed to transmission lines extensively damaged by U.S. bombing and vandals, who shoot down power lines to darken areas for looting.

Iraq's interim oil minister, Thamir Ghadban, who like Hasan was designated by ORHA, said his ministry was scaling back projections for resumed national oil production, saying it might reach only 1 million barrels a day -- instead of 1.5 million -- in June. He said damage to oil industry equipment from looting was more extensive than initially thought.

The dimensions of the challenges facing Bodine in Baghdad were apparent at her initial meeting with city officials on April 27.

"Working with the technocrats to get everything up and running is a first priority," she said then. But the setting was a meeting room without light or electricity, in a looted, debris-strewn building, with nine Iraqi men sitting glumly around a table, clearly unhappy.

Bodine had another problem as well -- an Iraqi opposition figure named Mohammed Mohsen al-Zubaidi, who had set himself up as a rival "mayor" of Baghdad. The U.S. military arrested al-Zubaidi on April 27, accusing him of subverting American authority.

Al-Zubaidi was freed Sunday, after he acknowledged he went too far and promised not to undermine U.S. efforts, Central Command said. "I am not the mayor of Baghdad, nor am I interested in working independently of the coalition to achieve what we all understand to be the same goal peace and prosperity for all Iraqis," al-Zubaidi was quoted by the U.S. military as saying.