*EPF704 04/06/2003
Wolfowitz Says Goal is Government "Of, By, and For the Iraqis"
(U.N has critical role in reconstruction) (620)

By Howard Cincotta
Washington File Special Correspondent

Washington -- The U.S. post-war goal in Iraq, to paraphrase President Abraham Lincoln, is a government "of the Iraqis, by the Iraqis, for the Iraqis," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said on CBS's Face the Nation April 6.

Wolfowitz, making the round of the Sunday TV news programs, also appeared on NBC's Meet the Press with Tim Russert and Fox News Sunday with Tony Snow.

The United Nations has an important role to play in Iraq, Wolfowitz emphasized in his broadcast interviews. "Reconstruction of Iraq, I think, is going to be one of the most important projects for the international community in many years," Wolfowitz said on Fox News Sunday, "and the U.N. can be a mechanism for bringing that assistance to the Iraqi people."

Wolfowitz, however, rejected the analogy of the U.N-sanctioned international authority in Kosovo. In Iraq, he stressed, "our goal has got to be to transfer authority and the operation of government as quickly as possible, not to some other external authority, but to the Iraqi people themselves."

On Fox News Sunday, Wolfowitz noted that it took six months to establish an interim authority in northern Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War. "This is a more complicated situation," he said. "It will probably take more time than that."

In all his appearances, Wolfowitz stressed the need to balance two imperatives. One is the immediate need to provide food, water, medicine, and other basic services. Only the coalition forces inside Iraq can meet those needs initially, Wolfowitz said. The other imperative, he pointed out, is to recognize that the U.S. and coalition forces are not there to run the country, but to hand it over to Iraqi interim authority.

"So we need to set up a process," he said on Fox News Sunday, "and this interim authority is a bridge to that process that creates a legitimate government of Iraq."

On Meet the Press, Wolfowitz highlighted the increasingly important role that is now being played by free Iraqis who are working actively with the coalition. "Having Iraqi Americans or Iraqi speakers with our forces has made it much easier for people to come and give us information."

Wolfowitz said, "I think it's very important to dismantle this whole structure of fear. The regime needs to be dismantled -- and not just Saddam Hussein, but the structures of terror."

The United States is eager to address the normal tensions and differences that occur among democracies, according to Wolfowitz. On Meet the Press, he pointed out that, after a democratic transition in the Philippines, the new government closed U.S. bases there.

"We have had our differences with Turkey," he said, "but I'm glad that Turkey is a democracy. I think we are going to work out those differences."

Wolfowitz said he had no doubt that, overall, the world would be a safer place following the liberation and reconstruction of Iraq. A number of nations, he said on Meet the Press, "will eventually get the message from this that it's much better to come to terms peacefully with the international community, to not acquire these weapons of mass destruction, to not use terrorism as an instrument of national policy, and to take care of your own people."

In the end, Wolfowitz said on CBS's Face The Nation, "It's got to be for the Iraqi people to pick their leaders, and our goal is to try to create the conditions, particularly the security conditions where they can do that freely."

(The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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