Apr 28, 2004 5 min read

WASHINGTON (AP) – Iraqis will have “a lot more sovereignty” after the June 30 handover of power, but the United States will still control security and the caretaker government won’t be able to make laws, the diplomat nominated to be ambassador to Baghdad said Tuesday. The interim government isn’t ready to take on the security job, and it’s not specifically its task to consider legislation, John D. Negroponte told a Capitol Hill confirmation hearing.

“Let’s remember this is going to be a transitional government, by definition limited in its time frame” of about six months, he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It’s focus will be to organize elections for another government under which a constitution eventually will be written.

As for security, there will still be some 160,000 U.S.-led foreign forces in Iraq. The multinational force, led by 135,000 Americans, will command Iraqi forces, which are largely untrained and poorly equipped.

“We’re going to work toward the day, and hope that it comes as early as possible, that the Iraqis can take greater and greater responsibility for their own security,” Negroponte said. “But they’re not in a position to do that at this particular moment.”

At the White House, spokesman Scott McClellan said the administration anticipates that “in accordance with the oft-expressed preferences of Iraqi leaders, that the Iraqis themselves will impose some limits on the authority of that interim government. But sovereignty will be transferred to the Iraqi people on June 30.”

The issue has become key as the deadline for political handover approaches and the U.S. pushes for a new United Nations resolution on Iraq.

Senators said they worry Iraqis won’t see the handover as genuine and it won’t take the American face off authority there. Indeed, in Iraq, U.S.-appointed leaders are already complaining.

“I think the sovereignty will be weak and not complete,” said Mahmoud Othman, a member of the Governing Council.

Ahmad Chalabi, a council member and U.S. ally, said he is pressing for more from L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. administrator in Iraq.

“We tell him that Iraqis should have a bigger role in security, we tell him that Iraqis should have a bigger role in taking financial decisions, we tell him that Iraqis should have a role in running the Iraqi reconstruction fund,” Chalabi told the Arab television station Al-Arabiya.

Negroponte said Iraqis will control some two dozen ministries, run day-to-day government operations, manage their own revenues and conduct international relations.

He said Iraqis and the U.S. military will have to work out any differences.

“If political leadership should favor some particular strategy,” but the U.S. military believes another strategy is better, “these are the kind of questions that (all sides) will have to deal with,” Negroponte said.

Pressed by Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., on the issue of whether Iraqis would have veto authority over U.S. military involvement in violence-torn cities like Fallujah, for example, Negroponte said: “It’s certainly going to be a lot more sovereignty than they have right now.”

He stressed the importance of a United Nations role in Iraq to give legitimacy to continued foreign presence.

“I want to make clear that a vital United Nations role does not come at the expense of the United States influence or interests,” Negroponte told the committee. “A strong partnership with the international community, including the United Nations … is in our strategic interests.”

The U.S.-led Coalition Authority plans to hand over power to an as-yet-unnamed transitional government on June 30, when Bremer will leave and Negroponte will take over control of U.S. diplomatic operations, though not military ones.

President Bush nominated Negroponte, now the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, just a week ago. Sen. Dick Lugar, the Indiana Republican who chairs the Foreign Relations panel, is pushing for quick Senate action.

Negroponte’s confirmation to the United Nations post was delayed a half-year mostly because of criticism of his record as the U.S. ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985. In Honduras, he played a prominent role in assisting the Contras in Nicaragua in their war with the left-wing Sandinista government.

Human rights groups alleged that Negroponte acquiesced in human rights abuses by Honduran death squads funded and partly trained by the CIA. Negroponte testified during the hearings for the U.N. post that he did not believe death squads were operating in Honduras. His Central American role came up again Tuesday.

Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn., noted previous differences with Negroponte and said they stemmed “largely from a lack of candor about what the U.S. was and wasn’t doing in Central America in the conflict at that time.”

If administration policies are not working in Iraq, Dodd said, “it’ll be your duty to the American people to say so, and to say so very clearly and without any hesitation so that we can make course corrections before it’s too late.”