Ex-general to run Iraq

2003-04-09 22:28

Washington - Retired US general Jay Garner will head to Baghdad as interim administrator with his team once the shooting stops, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Wednesday.

"They'll move to the Baghdad area at that point that the Baghdad airport is sufficiently secured to take a number of civilians who are not in a combat situation ... as the war and the kinetics decline," Rumsfeld said.

Garner and his team have been hard at work for weeks, at first from Washington and currently in Kuwait, at a safe distance from Iraq, Rumsfeld said.

"There's a lot more fighting that's going to be done. There's more people are going to be killed," he said.

Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers said Garner is able to accomplish important work without being in Iraq.

"It really doesn't matter where general Garner and his group is because they are, in fact, acting now," he said.

"The restoration of water supplies in several southern towns, the restoration of electrical power grids, he's the one that is overseeing that work."

- AFX