Iraq-USA, Politics, 5/17/2003

Italy announced yesterday it will send one of its diplomats to assume running the cultural affairs in the process of running the American occupation of Iraq, while Washington announced that one former police chief in New York agreed to head for Baghdad to take part in re-organizing the Iraqi ministry of the interior.

The Italian minister of culture, Jolyano Orbani, said that the Italian diplomat Pero Kordoni will assume the cultural affairs department in the office of rebuilding and humanitarian aid in Iraq. Kordoni, who was born in Egypt on September 10, 1954 has a certificate in oriental languages. he worked in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria, Yemen and the UAE.

In Washington, The New York Times quoted officials at the US defense department saying that the former commissioner of New York police Bernard Berek accepted an offer by the White House to assume the post of an advisor at the office of rebuilding, and he is in charge of organizing the Iraqi ministry of the interior.

The paper said that Berek contributed during 15 months of assuming the leadership of New York police ( 2000- 2001) to reducing crime rate, improving the police relations with ethnic minorities in the city, but he was punished because he had used police members in order to collect information on the killing of his mother to be use in a book he wanted to compose on that.