Matthew Lee, Agence France Presse  --  Arab news

WASHINGTON, 26 April 2004 — As the June 30 deadline for Iraq’s return to self-rule rapidly approaches amid unabated violence, the United States is struggling to outline the authority that sovereignty will bestow on the country’s new leaders.

With details of the interim governing structure still uncertain pending completion of UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi’s plans, US officials have been unwilling to enumerate the powers that the body will wield despite growing demands to prove it will be more than a US puppet.

Suggestions that Iraq will enjoy something less than full sovereignty — a prospect that could stir more resentment and complicate US efforts to secure international support — have been met with denials.

Yet it has become clear that the United States does not want the interim government to have the entire extent of wide-ranging powers usually associated with sovereignty or to seek or act on such a broad mandate.

The apparent inconsistency burst into the open this month as impatient US lawmakers inquired about the specific powers the occupation administration — the Coalition Provisional Authority — will cede to Iraqis when it disbands.

On April 8, Secretary of State Colin Powell first broached the concept of “limited sovereignty” in congressional testimony as he described how US forces in Iraq would continue to operate under US command after the transition.

A day later, he and others have said the limitations would involve only security matters. “It’s not our intention to create an Iraqi government that’s operating with one hand tied behind its back,” the State Department said. But last week, Powell’s No. 3, Marc Grossman, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the interim administration and national advisory council envisioned by Brahimi would not have the power to pass laws.

“We don’t believe that the period between the first of July and the end of December should be a time for making new laws,” he said, referring to the timeframe for the government to draft a constitution and prepare for elections.

Grossman also strongly implied that the interim government would not be able to change the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL), Iraq’s current law of the land put in place by the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council.

On Friday, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher insisted that Iraq’s sovereignty would not be impaired despite the fact that the country would be run under a law adopted during the US occupation.

“They’re going to run Iraq with full authority over the ministries, and they’ll be running Iraq on a daily, day-to-day basis,” he said. “That government will have sovereignty for Iraq.”

UN envoy Brahimi, in an April 14 statement, outlined a caretaker government headed by a prime minister with a president to act as head of state and two vice presidents.

The lack of a legislature necessarily means the government will be unable to legislate, Boucher said. He added that the government would able to rule by decree, but then questioned whether the Iraqis would want to change the TAL.

Privately, however, US officials acknowledge deep concerns that elements of Iraqi society — the Kurds in the north, the restive majority Shiite population in the south and deposed leader Saddam Hussein’s Sunni Muslim community in the center — may want to amend the TAL or scrap it entirely.

And, these officials concede that despite public statements to the contrary, the United States would be relatively powerless to stop such an attempt which they fear would destroy preparations for elections under a new constitution. “We don’t want them to try to reinvent the process, that would lead to chaos,” said one official. “But, at the same time, we want them to be in control and feel like they’re in control.

“Will Iraq be sovereign? Yes,” the official said. “Do we really want them to exercise that sovereignty? That depends.”