TALLIL AIRBASE, Iraq (April 15) - With their war against Saddam Hussein all
but won, the United States and Britain headed into talks on Tuesday with
Iraq's quarrelsome factions on how to rule the country now he is gone.

U.S.-led troops worked alongside local police to try to restore order on the
streets of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities after Saddam's final stronghold,
his hometown of Tikrit, fell to U.S. forces on Monday without the bloody
fight many expected.

Talks near the ancient Mesopotamian city of Ur, 235 miles south of Baghdad,
were aimed at shaping a postwar Iraq but highlighted the divisions among
Iraqi opposition groups, united mainly by a desire not to look like U.S.
puppets.

Even before the talks had formally started at an air base near Nassiriya in
southern Iraq, thousands of Iraqis protested in the city streets, saying they
wanted to rule themselves and chanting: "No to America, No to Saddam."

About 60 Iraqis, from radical and mainstream Shi'ite and Sunni Muslim,
Kurdish and monarchist groups, were due to attend. But many are irked by
Washington's choice of Jay Garner, a retired U.S. general, to head an interim
postwar administration.

Garner's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) says it
wants to hand over to an Iraqi government after a matter of months, but the
U.S. military authority in the country looks set to stay longer.

There are few illusions about the difficulties of installing a democratic
government in an ethnically and religiously divided land that over the past
century has known mainly monarchy, military dictatorship and one-party
Baathist rule.

But the stakes are high. Devastated by wars and sanctions, Iraq --
strategically located between the Arab world, Iran and Turkey -- has the
world's second largest proven oil reserves and Western firms are looking
hungrily at reconstruction contracts.

BOYCOTT BY SHI'ITE GROUP

Ahmad Chalabi, the high-profile Iraqi businessman favored by the Pentagon for
a role in Iraq, said he would send a representative to the meeting, not
attend himself. Iraq's main Shi'ite Muslim opposition group is boycotting it
altogether.

"It is not to the benefit of the Iraqi nation," said Abdelaziz Hakim, a
leader of the Iranian-based Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in
Iraq (SCIRI). "We don't accept a U.S. umbrella or anybody else's."

A spokesman for Chalabi told BBC radio that Tuesday's meeting, being held
amid tight media controls imposed by the U.S. military, was just one among
several and opposition leaders planned to hold their own gathering in Baghdad
soon.

"Iraqis must rule Iraq, we don't need either an American general or a U.N.
bureaucrat in charge," said Zaab Sethna.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw sought to dampen expectations about the
meeting. "It is not a one-off, it's the beginning of a process to restore
governance," he said in Qatar.

Garner, who chaired Tuesday's talks, said he was concerned at the slow start
of Iraq's transition effort.

"My fear right now is every day we delay we're probably losing some momentum
and there's perhaps some vacuums in there getting filled that we won't want
filled," Garner, who is based in neighboring Kuwait, told the newspaper USA
Today.

The Nassiriya talks took place with the United States insisting that the
looting and lawlessness that marked the first days after Saddam's overthrow
on Wednesday were subsiding.

In the past two days, streets have filled up with people going about their
everyday lives although most shops remain closed in the absence of
electricity. Mains water at ground level is available.

NIGHT TIME THREATS

But U.S. troops have begun distributing leaflets in Baghdad urging Iraqis to
stay at home at night because of persisting security threats, U.S. officials
said on Tuesday.

"During this time, terrorist forces associated with the former regime of
Saddam Hussein, as well as various criminal elements, are known to move
through the area and engage in hostile acts," the leaflet says.

Saddam himself has disappeared, as have most of his aides. Only two out of 55
officials on a U.S. "most wanted" list have so far been caught.

Deliveries of humanitarian aid -- food, water and medical supplies -- have
increased as security fears start to ease.

The Rome-based World Food Program said food shipments into northern Iraq
through Turkey would soon be running at 2,000 metric tons a day. The United
Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said trucks carrying 26,400 gallons of
drinking water were due to cross from Iran into southern Iraq on Tuesday.

Italy, whose government supported the U.S.-led invasion, said it intended to
send between 2,500 and 3,000 army and navy troops to Iraq to assist with
humanitarian aid and help keep order, but they would not have a combat role.

With the main fighting over in Iraq, and U.S. aircraft carriers in the Gulf
starting to leave, Washington turned up the heat on neighboring Syria,
calling it a "rogue nation."

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld accused Damascus of testing chemical
weapons within the last 12 to 15 months and of harboring Saddam's top
associates. Secretary of State Colin Powell warned of possible diplomatic or
economic sanctions.

Syria denied the U.S. charges, while U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan
expressed concern that the U.S. approach could further destabilize an already
shaky Middle East.

04/15/03 08:15 ET

Copyright 2003 Reuters Limited.  All rights reserved.

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