Edward Wong
New York Times
March 26, 2005
BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 25 - The delay in forming a new government in Iraq has stalled important projects at ministries and is sowing confusion among current government workers about their duties, senior Iraqi officials say.
After the Jan. 30 elections, the office of the interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, ordered the country's more than two dozen
ministries not to start any long-term projects or make any major policy decisions because the new government was expected to be
installed quickly.
Last week, as negotiations over a new government dragged on, Dr. Allawi's office rescinded its order. But some ministry officials
say they were not aware of that change or remain hesitant about pushing ahead with long-term projects. Many government
employees are also working at a slower pace because they are distracted by the political negotiations and insecurity of their own
jobs, the officials say.
"The lack of a government is causing a lot of problems," Sabah Kadhum, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, which oversees the
nascent police force, said this week. "People are not carrying out the responsibilities they should be. This is happening in all the
ministries. There's absolutely no excuse. It's a very unfortunate way to begin a new government."
The main Shiite and Kurdish political parties have been engaged in heated talks to form a coalition government. Together, they hold
more than two-thirds of the 275 seats in the national assembly, enough to name a president and two vice presidents, who will then
appoint a prime minister. But the two groups have doggedly looked after their own interests, and as the talks have sunk into a
quagmire, the confidence of ordinary Iraqis has ebbed.
Officials from both sides say they are at odds over the control of oil fields and the splitting of oil revenue, as well as over important
posts in the government. The Kurds and Shiites are also negotiating with the Sunni Arabs, who largely boycotted the elections, over
which jobs the Sunnis will fill. In addition, the various parties have yet to agree on any role Dr. Allawi and his allies might play in the
new government.
Fallout from the protracted talks has been mounting. Ali Faisal al-Lami, a senior Shiite official, said Friday in an interview that a split
had begun to emerge in the ranks of the main Shiite political bloc, as some Shiite politicians began to question the nomination of
Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a conservative former exile, for prime minister.
The most immediate impact, though, is being felt in the ministries, as officials struggle to overcome gridlock and carry on with
day-to-day work.
Hajim M. al-Hasani, the minister of industry and a national assembly member, said the initial order from Dr. Allawi's office forced
him to delay starting any long-term projects. That included anything needing large amounts of financing, he said. "I had a couple
companies that were supposed to sign contracts with foreign companies to do work on the factories, but they couldn't do it," he said.
The Ministry of Industry oversees 60 state-run companies spread out across 270 factory sites. It is also in charge of 11 more
companies that, under Saddam Hussein, produced weapons for the government. As with all ministries, any major decisions or plans
are supposed to be reviewed by the cabinet of ministers and various committees that report to the prime minister's office. The order
to freeze those plans was made shortly after the Jan. 30 elections by Zuhair Hamoudi, the head of the cabinet.
"For the last few weeks, these types of decisions, you couldn't really make," Mr. Hasani said. "Some of the ministers, because of
the first order, couldn't carry out what they're supposed to do."
That paralysis ended last week, when Mr. Hamoudi rescinded his order. Mr. Hasani said he was now pushing forward with major
contracts and projects. Still, he said, work at his ministry and others was slow to get going.
"The distraction is everywhere," he said. "Unless you're very close to the circle of decision making, you don't know what's going to
happen; of course people are distracted."
Raad al-Haris, a deputy electricity minister, said that with the start of the long hot season only weeks away, an array of delayed
power station projects now had to be pushed forward quickly.
"We are in a very critical time," he said, adding that in just two months, "we will have very high temperatures and we will have the
peak load."
In the Oil Ministry, officials were reluctant to commit to big contracts even before getting the order from the prime minister's office,
said Falah K. Khawaja, the ministry's director general for management, human relations and development. Noting that questions
over the future government have been lingering for months, he said, "We have been holding off on long-term planning for some
time."
Some officials said they were unaware that Mr. Hamoudi had lifted his order, and were still operating under the assumption that it
was still in place. One such official said he had prepared a big report in the third week of January but had never shown it to any of
his superiors because he was afraid it would get lost in the current atmosphere of uncertainty. "It's become a caretaker
government," he said.
"Most officials' minds are taken up by the politicking," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing
his job. "It's only natural."
That politicking is intense and changes day by day.
At the moment, the Shiites and Kurds are debating how to split up oil revenues, officials on both sides said. The Kurds have been
pushing for the Shiites to promise that tens of thousands of Kurds who were exiled from the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk under
Mr. Hussein will have their property quickly restored. The resulting demographic change would then strengthen the Kurdish case
that Kirkuk and its oil fields, which account for 10 to 20 percent of the country's reserves, should come under Kurdish
administration.
Based on the assumption that they will eventually control Kirkuk, the Kurds are arguing for more regional control of oil revenue.
Several formulas were being reviewed by the Kurds and the Shiites, including one that would give more control of revenue to the
provincial governments than to the central government in Baghdad, said Safeen Dizayee, a spokesman for the Kurdistan
Democratic Party, one of the two main Kurdish parties.
"This is a mechanism that needs to be worked out and needs to be clear," Mr. Dizayee said. "There are different proposals. It's a
matter of taking the most practical proposal."
James Glanz, Robert F. Worth and Khalid al-Ansary contributed reporting for this article.
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Citation: Edward Wong, "Delay and Uncertainty Hamper Day-to-Day Efforts of Iraqi Ministries", New York Times, March 26, 2005.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/26/international/middleeast/26baghdad.html?pagewanted=print&position=