A rchive Date
[ 22-04-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2003/04/21/69957-ap.html
Lugar: Democracy in Iraq to take at least 5 years
By WILLIAM C. MANN - Associated Press
Mon, April 21, 2003
WASHINGTON (AP) - Unlike the brilliance of the military campaign that ended Saddam Hussein's dictatorship in Iraq, planning for the post-Saddam era was lackluster, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee says.
As a result, says Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., America's job of installing a strong democratic system will require at least five years.
"The institution-building process in Iraq is a huge endeavor," Lugar said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press." "There's not much to work with at this point."
"I would think at least we ought to be thinking of a period of five years of time. Now, that may understate it," he added.
Such a period, rather than the four to five months that some are predicting, will result mainly "because they (Bush administration planners) started very late," Lugar asserted.
"The military strategy we've had and the tactics and the execution have been brilliant. But the problem was that, right from the beginning, (committee) hearings ... indicated that we needed to be doing similar preparation for, literally, the day or the hours after" Saddam's removal.
"A gap has occurred, and that has brought some considerable suffering," Lugar said.
His Indiana colleague, Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh, agreed that an extended American military presence in Iraq will be necessary. "We're going to have to be there for a while - not permanently, but for a while - because we don't want to win the war and then lose the peace," he told "Fox News Sunday."
Nevertheless, Bayh said he sees movement. "We'll have to maintain a significant presence here early on until things truly get settled down," said Bayh, a member of the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services committees. "There's some momentum toward a civil society in Iraq. And then hopefully we can begin to ratchet that back."
Iraq's pro-American opposition leader Ahmad Chalabi said a U.S. military presence in Iraq "is a necessity until at least the first democratic election is held. And I think this process should take two years." He told ABC's "This Week" that he views a strategic alliance between the two countries as "a very good thing."
To Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the United States must stay for as long as needed to fill the vacuum caused by Saddam's removal.
"We have created a vacuum in Iraq, which has no history of self-governance in modern time," Durbin said on CNN's "Late Edition." Considering Iraq's economy, ruined by corruption, then war, he said: "We have no choice but to stay to make certain that this is a stable and secure country for years to come."
Lugar spoke of the sensitivity of molding a system of governance for the Iraqis that would be dramatically different from what they have known.
The first task is to learn whether "there are groups of Iraqis prepared to work together," he said. "It may very well be that Kurds and other parts of the country might want a great deal of autonomy."
Non-Arab Kurds form the majority in northern Iraq and have exercised autonomy guaranteed by the United States and Britain for years. Iraq's majority Shiite Muslims, in the South, have been kept out of power by Sunnis like Saddam for decades.
In trying to bring the groups together, Lugar said, the United States must have specific goals and work with Iraqis who understand them.
"When it finally comes to elections," he said, "the result might not be totally satisfying." As in Turkey, which has a new government formed by an Islamic-rooted party and refused to let the U.S.-led coalition invade through Turkey, America generally would have to live with it, he said.
Lugar would draw the line at accepting an elected theocracy similar to that in neighboring Iran.
"I just think we cannot," he said. He agreed with former CIA Director James Woolsey, a fellow guest on NBC, that such an election would be "almost a one-vote, last-vote situation."
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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