Ex-Kissinger Director becomes new Iraq Coordinator

Switch in store for Iraq oversight

http://www.bayarea.com/mld/cctimes/news/5768577.htm

Faced with an array of problems that have slowed the effort to restore order in Iraq, the Bush administration plans to appoint a new coordinator to oversee all political and reconstruction issues in the country, administration officials say.

The White House is expected to name L. Paul Bremer III, a former ambassador and head of the State Department's counterterrorism office, as the new Iraq coordinator, sources said.

Bremer would have authority over retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, who now administers the country.

The administration of the country in the wake of Saddam Hussein's ouster has been fraught with difficulties, ranging from the breakdown of law and order to the collapse of basic services -- and the anti-American backlash these and other problems quickly sparked. Post-conflict tensions between U.S. troops and Iraqis have already produced confrontations and deaths.

The job of coordinating Iraq's reconstruction has proven much more complicated than originally anticipated, in part because of the massive looting and destruction after the fall of Baghdad, U.S. officials say. Bremer's appointment, reported first in Newsweek magazine, is expected to be announced soon.

Under Bremer, Garner will remain in charge of reconstruction, while Zalmay Khalilzad, the president's special envoy to Iraq, will oversee the political transition that now centers on forming an interim Iraq authority.

But U.S. sources speculated that adding a coordinator is also an attempt to rein in the Pentagon, which has dominated policy and sparked intense disputes within the administration, sometimes by defying agreements reached by the Bush war council.

"The Pentagon was running wild, and there's been no parental oversight," said a well-placed U.S. official familiar with the internal friction.

It was unclear whether Bremer will report to the Pentagon, which had no comment on his expected appointment.

In a further bid to restore order to Iraq, Britain has launched talks with more than a dozen nations about forming a multinational force to stabilize the country and train a new police force, according to U.S. and European officials.

After talks in London this week, Britain has won agreement from Spain, Italy and Poland to contribute forces to help restore law and order in Iraq, according to U.S., Spanish and British officials. The initial sounding of donor countries was "very positive," a British official said.

At a news conference here with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Spanish Foreign Minister Ana Palacio said Thursday that Spain is willing to participate. Spanish defense officials said Madrid is prepared to deploy 500 military police officers and 125 Guardia Civil troops, who played similar postwar roles in the volatile Balkans in the 1990s.

Polish defense officials said this week that they had been asked to provide up to 4,000 troops, while Denmark has reportedly discussed sending 380 troops to Iraq for the stabilization phase.

The country is far from stabilized.

The State Department, National Security Council, CIA and the U.S. Central Command, which ran the war, have become increasingly frustrated with Iraqi exile leader Ahmad Chalabi and his Free Iraqi Forces, the U.S. sources said.

Both are backed by the Pentagon, which favors giving Chalabi a leading role in an interim government.

The Free Iraqi Forces had lately begun setting up roadblocks in defiance of U.S. military orders and even confronted American troops when ordered to take them down. Some of the U.S.-trained forces were also linked with looting, apparently for their own gain, the sources added.

"Centcom decided these guys were becoming a threat to law and order as well as U.S. security," said an administration official who requested anonymity.

Chalabi, a Shiite Muslim who fled Baghdad in 1958 and returned under Pentagon auspices during the war, has come to symbolize the conflict between the State Department and the Pentagon over how to transform Iraq after Saddam Hussein's demise.

The State Department advocates allowing new leaders to emerge from within and, along with former exiles, determine the course to a new Iraqi democracy -- even if it sometimes means a messy and uncertain period and the result has an Islamic tinge.

Powell said Thursday that Iraq could be democratic and Islamic.

"We see no inconsistency between their faith and the values of democracy that we all hold dear," he told a news conference in Madrid.

But the Pentagon's political leadership has strongly backed expediting the transition process and allowing the secular opposition figures to play a pre-eminent role, despite fears that they may be seen as either U.S. puppets or an imposed government, U.S. and allied sources say.

A White House announcement of a new coordinator comes after months of battles between the State Department and the Pentagon over postwar planning and policy.

Bremer's credentials bridge the administration divide. The Yale graduate spent 23 years at the State Department, serving in Afghanistan, Malawi, Norway and the Netherlands.

He joined the consultancy company run by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1989.

Respected by the neoconservatives who crafted Iraq policy and promoted the war, Bremer was appointed chairman of the National Commission on Terrorism in 1999 to review U.S. counterterrorism policy.

The commission reported its findings in 2000.

Last year, Bush appointed him to the president's Homeland Security Advisory Council.

A former managing director of Kissinger Associates, he now heads the Crisis Consulting Practice of Marsh Inc., a major risk assessment company.

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L. PAUL BREMER III, age 61.

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Marsh Crisis Consulting Company. Director of the Company since 1993.

In 2001, former Ambassador Bremer was made Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Marsh Crisis Consulting, a company owned by Marsh McLennan Inc., the world's largest insurance broker. Ambassador Bremer joined Marsh McLennan Inc. in 2000 as Managing Director, MMC Enterprise Risk. Prior to joining Marsh McLennan Inc., Ambassador Bremer was managing director of Kissinger Associates following a 23-year career in the U.S. Diplomatic Service.

Ambassador Bremer held various assignments including political, economic, and commercial officer at the American Embassies in Afghanistan and Malawi and Deputy Chief of Mission and chargé d'affaires at the American Embassy in Oslo, Norway. He was appointed Executive Secretary of the State Department and Special Assistant to the Secretary of State in 1981. In 1983, he was named United States Ambassador to the Netherlands, and in 1986 he was appointed Ambassador-at-Large for Counter-Terrorism. Ambassador Bremer is also a director of Akzo Nobel N.V. and the Netherland-America Foundation.

Proposed US ‘Civilian’ Iraq Administrator Another Neocon Hawk

http://www.Republicons.org 5/2/2003

Bremer has strong ties to the neoconservative vein of the Republican Party. He served as Managing Director of Kissinger Associates from 1989 to 2000. Kissinger Associates is the consulting firm headed by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Kissinger himself, refused to have his firm’s contracts investigated when he was nominated to lead the September 11 investigative committee. It remains to be seen if Bremer will offer to reveal the names of the organizations and nations that have been contracted by Kissinger Associates through the years.

Robert Sheer, LA Times columnist, underscored some of the concerns about prospective conflicts of interest that Kissinger Associates had in its international contracts. “Kissinger Associates, the former secretary of State's ultra-connected consulting firm, has had dealings in the past with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait -- the two nations most closely linked with the 9/11 hijackers -- and was the subject of a congressional investigation for its role in the $4-billion bankrolling of Saddam Hussein in the late 1980s by the Atlanta office of Italy's BNL bank. Kissinger Associates then included Brent Scowcroft, who became national security advisor for President George H.W. Bush, and Lawrence Eagleburger, secretary of State in that administration,” Sheer wrote in December 2002.

In his book “The Trial of Henry Kissinger” published in 2001, Christopher Hitchins further reveals the complicity of Kissinger Associates with the regime of Saddam Hussein.

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