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Baghdad official steps down { May 11 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Politics.htmlhttp://nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Politics.html
May 11, 2003
American Overseeing Baghdad to Step Down
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:47 a.m. ET
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- The U.S. official sent in to oversee Baghdad and a large swath of its surrounding territory is leaving her position immediately after less than a month, a spokesman for the postwar American administration said Sunday.
Barbara Bodine, the coordinator for central Iraq, planned to depart Baghdad later Sunday, according to U.S. Army Maj. John Cornelio, a spokesman for the U.S. Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, the reconstruction effort's civilian wing.
No replacement has been named yet, Cornelio said in an interview. Bodine has been in Iraq for less than three weeks.
Cornelio could not say what the next assignment might be for Bodine, a former American ambassador to Yemen. However, The Washington Post, in its Sunday editions, called the move a reassignment and reported she would become deputy director of the U.S. State Department's political-military division.
Bodine did not know the specific reason for her reassignment, she told the Post.
``I'm not leaving with the sense that we've done everything we could have done, but I'm also not leaving with the sense that it's been a failure,'' she said in the Post interview.
Bodine's departure comes in the midst of an apparent shake-up of the civilian reconstruction force assigned to oversee postwar Iraq and help it move toward an inclusive post-Saddam interim government.
The top civilian administrator, retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, is expected to leave his post shortly after the appointment of his superior, L. Paul Bremer, a longtime State Department official.
Garner's exact departure date has not been announced. He remained active during appearances this weekend and said the plan for him to leave in such a short time frame has been in place all along.
Some Iraqis have complained bitterly of the slow pace of the U.S. reconstruction efforts and say that such basic services as electricity and running water remain widely unrepaired a month after Saddam Hussein was overthrown.
Bremer was expected in Iraq later this week, Cornelio said.
The 61-year-old Bremer was an assistant to former Secretaries of State William P. Rogers and Henry Kissinger. He also was ambassador-at-large for counterterrorism from 1986 to 1989 and served as ambassador to the Netherlands.
Bodine, a St. Louis native, was on assignment in Kuwait when she was held captive by Saddam Hussein's invading forces for 137 days before the Gulf War began in January 1991.
Meanwhile Sunday, hundreds of Iraqi Foreign Ministry employees returned to the ministry compound in central Baghdad to collect a one-time, emergency payment of $20 decreed by ORHA.
Ministry officials said employees, including diplomats and administrative staff, were last paid March 16, four days before the U.S.-led war on Iraq began.
``We came here hoping to receive our salaries, but instead we got the $20 we heard about,'' said Lobna Mohammed, a ministry translator. ``It's not enough, because we need so many things and we are suffering too much. We just came out of a war.''
Odai Abdel-Sattar, a Baghdad University law graduate who joined the diplomatic service in 2001, said the money would come in handy. ``Everything has become so expensive and this money will help,'' he said.
David Dunford, a retired career U.S. diplomat who is now the senior ORHA adviser at the Foreign Ministry, said $20 might be a trivial sum to some of the ministry's employees, but the payment would help the economy.
``It's an effort to get money to people and to get them to putting money in the economy to help the economy restarted,'' Dunford said. ``Clearly, a $20 payment over a long period of time is inadequate, but it's a start.''
The money, Dunford said, came from Iraqi assets in the West that were frozen during the 1990-91 Gulf crisis and subsequent war over Kuwait.
The cash was distributed at a two-story annex next to the main Foreign Ministry building. The main building was looted and set ablaze in the days after the April 9 fall of Baghdad.
Dunford said Iraqi diplomatic missions abroad have been instructed ``not to speak in the name of Iraq'' and that heads of missions have been ordered to return home for consultations.
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Associated Press correspondent Hamza Hendawi contributed to this report.
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