US: With the war in Iraq entering its final stages, the summit meeting between US President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair in Hillsborough Castle today brings to the forefront sharp differences between the two leaders over the establishment of a transitional government in Baghdad, writes Conor O'Clery, travelling with President Bush.
Mr Blair is expected to press Mr Bush to back off from unilaterally setting up such an interim authority of Iraqi exiles and US "advisers" in Baghdad, on the grounds that it would complicate moves to get the UN Security Council to approve an international reconstruction effort.
However, hundreds of US officials, including retired military officers and diplomats, as well as exiled Iraqis, have assembled in Kuwait under a retired US general, ready to enter Iraq this week and start taking over the 23 departments of the existing government, prior to setting up an interim authority of Iraqis.
Deputy Defence Secretary Mr Paul Wolfowitz said yesterday the UN should not be invited in to supervise and run an interim government like it did in places like Kosovo. "It's not a model we want to follow, of a sort of permanent international administration," he told CBS television. He thought the right goal was to move as quickly as possible to a government "that is - if I could paraphrase Abraham Lincoln - of the Iraqis, by the Iraqis, for the Iraqis," not "a colonial administration or a UN administration, or run in any way by foreigners."
The UK government is said to be preparing a resolution at the UN that would authorise the appointment of a special UN co-ordinator to supervise aid work and the setting up of an interim authority, and establish an international police force to preserve order and facilitate the safe return of refugees.
Progress today is likely to be complicated by the fact that many Bush administration officials see little role for the UN in Iraq, other than in aid distribution, and unresolved arguments rage in Washington over the supreme role assumed by the Pentagon in the reconstruction of a defeated Iraq.
Mr Bush supports the lead role assumed by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in post-war Iraq but, in a rare show of defiance, the Republican-controlled Congress rejected the president's request to give the Pentagon substantial spending powers for reconstruction and voted to give the money to the State Department instead.
The White House says it will try to get the decision reversed, but aides from both parties on Capitol Hill said Mr Bush had tried to give too much say to Mr Rumsfeld in the post-war governance of Iraq.
The House and Senate voted on Thursday to devote $80 billion to pay for the war and initial reconstruction, but it stipulated that Mr Colin Powell's State Department should be in charge of the $2.5 billion allocated to post-war relief and construction.
Some Republican Congress members said they were unhappy with the military getting involved in "nation-building".
National security adviser Ms Condoleezza Rice said at the weekend that the president had designated the Defence Department and Mr Rumsfeld as the "lead agency" in running and deciding policy for the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), as the US team of officials waiting in Kuwait will be known.
It will run utilities and the bureaucracy until the interim Iraqi authority is set up to prepare for elections to a new government. Retired US army general Mr Jay Garner is the head of ORHA and reports to overall commander Gen Tommy Franks.
The Pentagon and the State Department are also in dispute over the composition of a transitional government.
The Defence Department wants exiled Iraqis to take a dominant role but the State Department is wary of thrusting Iraqi figures who have long been abroad into power, and prefers a larger, though not central, role for the United Nations.
The UK government, however, is intent on persuading the US to give the UN a central role in the post-war running of Iraq, to legitimise the US-British occupation in the eyes of the world.
"Our aim is to move as soon as possible to an interim authority run by Iraqis," Mr Blair said on Friday in a message broadcast to the Iraqi people.
White House spokesman Mr Ari Fleischer said the issue of UN involvement would be on the agenda in Northern Ireland but that it was too early to discuss the "exact nature" of the UN role.
Mr Blair is also expected to try to persuade Mr Bush on the merits of a resolution sending weapons inspectors back to Iraq after the fighting stops, to verify that the US-led forces had completed the disarmament of any uncovered weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
It is understood that the British are suggesting a UN co-ordinator would take over the suspended oil-for-food programme, which diverted funds from the export of oil to purchase food and humanitarian supplies for Iraqi people.
The British will have taken close note of what Ms Rice had to say in a briefing with reporters before Mr Bush set out for Belfast.
Putting the Pentagon in charge of the initial reconstruction "only makes sense, because we are in a war, that the phase of war termination and immediate aftermath would be a Defence Department effort," she said.
The US goal was clear she said: "We will help Iraqis build an Iraq that is whole, free and at peace with itself and with its neighbours; an Iraq that is disarmed of all WMD weapons of mass destruction; that no longer supports or harbours terror; that respects the rights of Iraqi people and the rule of law; and that is on the path to democracy.
Ms Rice said the interim authority "will be a transitional authority run by Iraqis, until a legitimate permanent government in Iraq is established by the Iraqi people. It will be broad-based, drawing from all of Iraq's religious and ethnic groups, including Iraqis currently inside and outside of Iraq. It will be a means for Iraqis to participate immediately in the economic and political reconstruction of their country."
It would not be "a Coalition-imposed provisional government," she said.
The Coalition was committed to working in partnership with the UN but Iraq was not East Timor or Kosovo or Afghanistan. East Timor was a new state, Afghanistan a failed state and Kosovo not a state at all, she said.
Iraq was a country with a "pretty sophisticated bureaucracy" and technocratic talent among civil servants that can help in rebuilding the country.
"The precise role of the UN will be determined in consultations between the Iraqi people, Coalition members and UN officials," she said.
Asked if Iraq would not become "another Northern Ireland" while US forces were there, Ms Rice said: "We fundamentally believe that when the grip of terror that Saddam Hussein's regime has wreaked on its own people is finally broken and Iraqis have an opportunity to build a better future, that you are going to see people who want to build a better future - not blow it up."