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Ruling Baghdad the American way
17/04/2003 19:09 - (SA)
Baghdad - The self-proclaimed top Iraqi in Baghdad kicked off his term on Thursday with an American-style tour of the city, shaking hands and kissing babies even as US forces denied his appointment.
Mohammed Mohsen Zubeidi, a long-time opponent of ousted president Saddam Hussein, visited two hospitals, an electric relay station, a gasoline company and a water treatment plant with a flock of reporters in tow.
At each stop the balding, goateed Zubeidi pledged to restore normalcy to the five-million-strong capital. And at each stop he was warmly welcomed by Iraqis thirsty for a show of authority - even from a total unknown.
"I don't know who he is, but he is the first Iraqi official to visit us," said a young doctor, Ragheed Taleb, in the Alwiya women and children hospital.
The hospital was one of the very few in Baghdad spared looting in the chaos that followed the collapse of Saddam's regime after the entry of US troops in the city on April 9.
"This hospital is very important, we have 20 to 25 deliveries a day, people from the neighbourhood stood guard around it with Kalashnikov" assault rifles, said Taleb.
"The most important thing is electricity, we can manage for the rest," the director of the hospital, Mohammed Ali Taweel, told Zubeidi, as power was cut off several times during the visit.
"We want security," said a nurse supervising the section of newborns. A women came forward and gave the self-proclaimed governor her two-day old son Sajjad Abbas to kiss.
Zubeidi, 51, took it all in with gubernatorial panache, sniffing at the sayings of Saddam he found still hanging on the walls. "I want you to throw out the symbols of the dictatorship," he said.
After 15 years in northern Iraq, Zubeidi told journalists he was "elected" on Wednesday by religious and community leaders as "president of Baghdad's executive committee", a body tasked to restore basic services.
He added Thursday that Jawdat al-Obeidi was "elected" as his deputy and the rest of the committee was to be formed. Only a day earlier, however, he was billing himself as head of the new Baghdad government and Obeidi as mayor.
Zubeidi said they were holding daily meetings with US military officials at the Marines headquarters in the Palestine Hotel. But the US Marine Corps said Thursday that no Iraqi appointments had been made or sanctioned.
Still, several Iraqi police officers and officials from the ministry of transportation came to the meeting held in the morning by Zubeidi and Obeidi in the Palestine Hotel.
Zubeidi and Obeidi travelled in a light double-cab Japanese pick-up truck for the tour, along with several police officers and journalists on the flatbed.
In the gasoline distribution company, Zubeidi, urged the workers to "start from new, to forget who is a member of the Baath party" that ruled the country under Saddam, "and who is not."
"We have to prove to the world, and to the Americans, that we are able to run our country," added Zubeidi, who presents himself as an "independent" opponent of the old regime.
Asked whether he favored US participation in Iraq's oil sector, he said "no, we can produce and export by ourselves." The country sits on 112 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the second largest in the world after Saudi Arabia.
A US amphibious assault vechicle blocked the entry to Baghdad's main electric relay station, in the eastern district of Jadriya, and Zubeidi met with its director, Faeq Bidani, in a wasteland outside.
"The Americans are protecting the facility," said Zubeidi.
Bidani explained that the transformer was intact and would be able to operate at "100% capacity" once the damage done to the grid was repaired.
"Until then, rationing will continue, but I promise fair rationing for all neighbourhoods," Bidani told Zubaidi.
The water treatment plant was not damaged but an electricity shortage reduced its pumping capacity, said its director, Riad Radi. The facility was also guarded by US troops and there was a representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross inside.
- SAPA
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