Postwar Plans Dismay Iraq Dissidents

Postwar Plans Dismay Iraq Dissidents
Fri Oct 11,11:08 PM ET
By SARAH EL DEEB, Associated Press Writer

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Iraqi dissidents and the Arab League expressed dismay Friday at U.S. plans for postwar Iraq that might involve foreign military control of the country.



Pentagon (news - web sites) officials said Friday the U.S. administration is working on postwar plans that could include using American and other foreign troops as a stabilizing force until a government is formed to replace that of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites).

"This is not what we were told," said Hamid al-Bayati, a representative of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a leading Shiite-led opposition group.

"We were told by American officials that they want a broad-based Iraqi government ... with no direct American role," al-Bayati said.

Al-Bayati was a member of an Iraqi opposition delegation that met with U.S. officials in August under the umbrella of the Iraqi National Congress, a coalition of groups opposed to the Iraqi regime.

"They can't do that. The Iraqi people will not accept it and nobody else in the region will," he said in a telephone interview from London. "We refuse Saddam's dictatorship and any other dictatorship in the future," he said.

Hazem el-Youssefi, a member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, said the idea of foreign military presence was one of the scenarios discussed with U.S. officials. But his group, he said, rejects the idea of American invasion.

"The Iraqi opposition after all these years will not settle for a foreign occupation," he said.

A spokesman for the 22-member Arab League said some of the latest plans and ideas coming out of Washington regarding Iraq were "very simplistic" and "to say the least, laughable", including the idea of military occupation of postwar Iraq.

"This is ridiculous. This is not Afghanistan (news - web sites). Iraq is totally different," Hisham Youssef said, adding the objective of U.S. intervention is yet to be made clear.

Foreign military presence in Iraq will aggravate the Arab population already disheartened with U.S. policy in the region, he said.

The Arab League is opposed to any talk of regime change and how to bring that about, Youssef said.

"Our efforts are focused ... on trying to avoid a war," Youssef said. It is "a fight against all odds. But we have to continue to fight."

Abdel-Moneim Said, director of Cairo's Al-Ahram Center for Strategic Studies, says floating the idea of foreign military control of Iraq is part of increasing the pressure on the Iraqi leader to concede and be more cooperative.

"The big 1-million-dollar question is how the Iraqi people will feel about it, will they consider it a liberating force or an invasion," he said, adding Iraqi resistance will be tough if U.S. intervention is seen as an invasion.