Excerpts from previous political updates, by subject:

April 21, 2004

Seeking U.N. help in Iraq

In April, during the deadliest month for U.S. soldiers since they invaded Iraq, the U.S. and British governments spoke of seeking a new U.N. Security Council resolution in Iraq.  Having once insisted on excluding the United Nations from shaping Iraq's future, the United States has clearly reversed its position. Edward Mortimer, a senior aide to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, told the New York Times that the shift has caused "a mixture of vindication on the one hand and great apprehension on the other." Annan has refused to allow a permanent U.N. presence in Iraq until the security of his personnel can be guaranteed, but will send small teams to assist the country.

Shiite objections to Iraq's interim constitution

The legitimacy of Iraq's interim constitution, formally called Iraq's Transitional Administrative Law, which was signed on March 8 after days of political deadlock, is under attack.  The main objection of Shiite officials is to the veto power of the Kurds over the ratification of the permanent constitution. They are also concerned about the power of the deputy presidents - probably a Kurd and a Sunni - to veto the decisions of the president - probably a Shiite.

A two-front insurgency

The U.S.-led coalition has faced an increasingly bloody two-front insurgency. After pitched battles with both Sunnis and Shiites in April, negotation with local leaders has produced a lull. Leaders in Fallujah have called for the city's Sunni insurgents to halt attacks on U.S. Marines and surrender their heavy weapons. In exchange, U.S. forces relaxed their cordon around the city and have given an Iraqi court responsibility for pursuing the killers of the four American contractors whose bodies were mutilated and hanged on March 31. U.S. forces also hoped that Iraqi negotiators can help resolve a standoff with Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr and his militia in the holy city of Najaf. Some 2,500 U.S. troops pulled back from a base outside the city to avoid bloodshed and damage to the city's shrines.

Insurgents in Baghdad

In March, the Washington Post reported that Islamic extremists have replaced Baathist fighters as the "principal threat" to security in Baghdad, according to Brig. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey. In February, the New York Times cited U.S. military intelligence as saying that there were 250 to 300 hard-core insurgents operating in Baghdad in about 14 cells. Dempsey estimated that "foreign terrorists" were only a small component of Baghdad's insurgents, with about 100 organized in six cells. U.S. officials have also said that some foreign Islamic fighters, such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian affiliated with the terrorist group Ansar al-Islam, are involved in the insurgency, mainly in cooperation with Iraq's Sunni Muslims.

U.S. troops shoulder an increasing burden

Troop levels have been kept high in Iraq partly because Iraqi security forces refused to help quell uprisings in March and April. However, the United States has not formally announced the legal status of its military forces in Iraq following the June 30 handover.  In early 2004, the Pentagon rotated in about 110,000 U.S. soldiers to replace approximately 115,000 of the 135,000 troops in Iraq.  In addition to the 110,000 fresh troops, the Pentagon is holding over for an extra three months about 20,000 troops that were due to rotate out of Iraq. In April, about 1,300 Iraqis and 137 U.S. troops were killed in Iraq. Nearly 700 U.S. soldiers have died since the war began, about two-thirds of them since May 1, when President Bush declared the end of major combat operations.

The ongoing violence threatens to discourage foreign troops and contractors from assisting in the transition. The coalition was dealt a blow when Spain and Honduras said they were pulling their respective 1,300 and 370 troops out of Iraq. At the same time, Russia began the voluntary evacuation from Iraq of hundreds of Russian contractors after three of its citizens were abducted in mid-April. While the Bush administration is hoping that NATO will take on a military role in Iraq, the organization appears reluctant and has said it will only consider participating after a request from a sovereign Iraqi government and under a new U.N. Security Council resolution.

As of April, there are approximately 21,000 non-American troops from 31 countries deployed in Iraq. A Polish-led international force of 9,500 soldiers has taken over most of the security duties for a swath of territory south of Baghdad that includes the towns of Karbala, Najaf and Hilla. Japan has sent troops, and South Korea has agreed to send troops, but a number of key states such as France, Germany, India, Pakistan and Turkey have not.

Intelligence inquiries in Britain

An independent inquiry led by Lord Hutton, a senior judge, cleared Prime Minister Blair and his aides in January of allegations that they exaggerated intelligence on Iraq's weapons capability and drove Dr. David Kelly, a biological weapon expert with extensive experience in Iraq, to suicide. Kelly was named by the British Broadcasting Corporation as the source behind a report that Prime Minister Tony Blair's government had published a "sexed up" claim that Iraq could launch unconventional weapons within 45 minutes while knowing that it was probably wrong. Although Kelly denied being the main source for the story, he did admit to meeting with BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan in May. Hutton blamed the BBC for broadcasting the "unfounded" allegation that the government exaggerated intelligence, and in the wake of the inquiry, BBC Chairman Gavyn Davies resigned.

Kelly committed suicide only days after testifying on July 15, 2003 before the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons, which published a report of its inquiry on July 7. The Committee concluded that it was "too soon to tell whether the Government's assertions on Iraq's chemical and biological weapons will be borne out," but that "the 45 minutes claim did not warrant the prominence given to it in the dossier." Although the report exonerated Blair's communications director Alastair Campbell of the charge that he manipulated evidence, it was nonetheless critical of Blair's government. In what was described by Downing Street as an unrelated and long-planned decision, Campbell stepped down from his position on August 29.

Training Iraqi forces

The Pentagon has accelerated the training of Iraqi forces in an effort to share the burden of providing security. In early 2004, an estimated 200,000 Iraqis were reportedly serving in Iraq's security forces, which include the army, police, border guards and the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps. In March, many of them refused to assist U.S. troops in suppressing the two-front rebellions, and some even joined Sadr's militia.

U.S. forces have already taken steps to transfer the policing of Baghdad to Iraqis. By February, the American military had reportedly cut its posts in the Iraqi capital from 60 to 26 and expected to have only eight by mid-April. About 8,000 Iraqi police officers patrolled Baghdad in February, although according to security analysts, the city needs 19,000. However, Iraqi police officers continue to be targeted by insurgents, and at least 350 have been killed in the past year.

Costs of the war in 2003

Security problems have hampered the Bush administration's efforts to encourage private investment in Iraq and to secure financial pledges from foreign governments and international lending organizations. This lack of international fund-raising success has placed additional pressure on the Bush administration to provide a more precise estimate of how much it will cost to secure and rebuild Iraq. In late September 2003, the administration provided Congress with a detailed account of how it planned to spend the $20 billion requested for that purpose. Spending was proposed for four major areas: Iraq's electric power infrastructure; its police, military and constabulary forces; its water and sewer systems; and its oil industry. During an appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee on July 9, 2003, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld reported that the average cost estimate for the Iraqi campaign from January through September had reached $3.9 billion per month. This figure is nearly double the $2 billion per month estimate given by administration officials the preceding April. In an interview with the Associated Press, Defense Department Comptroller Dov Zakheim estimated that by the end of September 2003 the cost of the war would total around $58 billion, including prewar expenses. In April 2003, the House and Senate approved a war package of $79 billion, several billion dollars more than the President's $74.7 billion request, after resolving disputes over earmarked funds for Iraqi reconstruction and more parochial issues. The President signed the bill on April 16. The spending bill covers not only war costs, humanitarian aid and payments to coalition partners and helpers, but also aid for U.S. airlines and homeland security funding. Many in Congress have said the package is only a "down-payment." In February 2003, the Pentagon estimated the cost of war in Iraq to be between $60 and $95 billion, not including costs for a post-war period.

The cost of running Iraq also continued to rise. L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, told the Washington Post in August 2003 that in addition to the ongoing cost of military operations, estimated at nearly $4 billion a month, he expected the cost of meeting electrical demand to be $2 billion and the cost of revamping the national system to deliver clean water to be $16 billion over four years. Bremer said that Iraq's economic needs are "almost impossible to exaggerate." In November 2003, after intense pressure from the White House, Congress passed an $87 billion package to finance military operations and reconstruction in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Most of the money will go for military costs, but the sum does include the $19 billion grant the United States is contributing to Iraq's reconstruction.

International support for reconstruction

In spite of difficulties on the ground, the United States has gained at least some international support for its reconstruction efforts. On October 16, the U.N. Security Council unanimously approved an American-British resolution authorizing an American-led multinational force in Iraq. The Council's unity in passing the resolution, however, was short-lived. Several countries said the resolution was insufficient to elicit additional contributions of troops or money, and Russia, France and Germany issued a joint statement saying that the resolution "should have gone further...on the role of the United Nations...[and] the pace of the transfer of responsibilities to the Iraqi people."

In a bid to attract international financial aid, the United States endorsed the creation of an independent agency run by the World Bank and the United Nations to help administer a reconstruction fund. At an international donors conference in Madrid, $13 billion was raised for the fund from non-U.S. sources. Still, the total amount promised by donors - $32 billion including $19 billion from the United States - fell short of the estimated $56 billion needed to rebuild the country. President Bush predicted that "excess Iraqi oil revenues, coupled with private investments, should make up the difference..." A significant portion of the $13 billion in international donations consisted of loans rather than grants. Iraq already has approximately $120 billion of debt, most of which may have to be written off, according to World Bank President James Wolfensohn.