'US may need to delay Iraqi power transfer'
Reuters, Washington
The Bush administration may have to consider extending its June 30 deadline for the transfer of sovereignty in Iraq or risk seeing the country lapse into civil war, the head of the US Senate's foreign relations panel said on Sunday. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar of Indiana and the panel's ranking Democrat, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, said in separate interviews that more troops may be needed to stabilize Iraq amid growing violence including deadly clashes in a Shia section of Baghdad that killed seven US soldiers. The lawmakers also chastised the Bush administration for failing to produce a plan to deal with a newly sovereign Iraq, and touted a Biden proposal that would give Nato a major new security role and establish a UN commissioner for Iraq who would answer to the UN Security Council. "We're going to end up with a civil war in Iraq, if in fact we decide we can turn this over -- including the bulk of the security -- to the Iraqis," Biden told "Fox News Sunday," saying an Iraqi force would not be ready to take over security duties for at least another three years. "Something's got to happen between now and then ... or else we're going to end up with a civil war there. We're going to end up with the worst of all worlds," he added. Less than three months before the scheduled handover of sovereignty by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority, Lugar told ABC's "This Week" that the Bush administration had not advised Congress on its plans for Iraq once CPA administrator Paul Bremer leaves. The White House has not discussed likely candidates for the job of US ambassador to Iraq, who would oversee a huge Baghdad embassy staff of 3,000 people charged with assuming some of the CPA's responsibilities. Asked whether it was time for Washington to consider extending the sovereignty deadline, Lugar said: "It may be. And I think it's probably time to have that debate. "At this point, I would have thought there would have been a more comprehensive plan," he added. "The fact is that we don't know what we're going to do." Lugar suggested the administration had been distracted from Iraq by Bush's decision to let his national security adviser testify before the panel investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "Our focus has been on 9/11 -- who did what, and who didn't -- but it ought to be on June 30," he said. The Senate foreign relations panel was scheduled to examine the situation in Iraq at hearings later this month.
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