Michael Georgy • Reuters -- Arab News

BAGHDAD, 21 February 2004 — In all the uncertainty over Iraq’s political future, only one thing seems clear — few Iraqis want the US-appointed Governing Council to lead them.

“We reject the council. They are just agents of the Americans. They do not represent the Iraqi people,” said Majeed Salim, a 21-year-old student in the Baghdad slum of Sadr city.

“The council backs the Americans and the Americans arrest people opposed to them. They act like Saddam did and they talk about democracy.”

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan backed on Thursday the American position that early elections would not be feasible in postwar Iraq.

Attention is increasingly focused on the Governing Council as a possible interim leadership and there have been discussions of expanding it to broaden representation of Iraq’s Shiite, Sunni and Kurd ethnic groups.

But the idea has not gained favor in the streets, where its members are mostly seen as American puppets who spent years in Western capitals while ordinary Iraqis suffered under toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

The vast majority of Iraqis interviewed by Reuters since the Governing Council was created oppose it.

The majority of council members came back from exile and few stayed in Iraq during Saddam’s rule. Decisions are made in close consultation with the US occupation authority.

That arrangement has made most Iraqis highly skeptical about the promises of democracy that the United States has been making since it invaded Iraq in March.