Iraq's neighbors told the US yesterday not to touch the country's oil wealth, and US forces announced the capture of a minister who may have helped President Saddam Hussein stash away billions of dollars abroad.
Iraqi police arrested Finance Minister Hikmat Ibrahim al-Azzawi in Baghdad on Friday and handed him over to US Marines yesterday, a military spokeswoman said.
Azzawi is number 45 on the list of Iraqis most wanted by the US and the eight of diamonds in a deck of cards issued to troops hunting Saddam and other ousted leaders.
The US military hopes he can help track funds alleged to have been secretly transferred abroad by Saddam and his family.
Although Saddam was widely hated, the US presence in Iraq has angered ordinary Iraqis and worried Middle East leaders who fear the troops will stay too long. They question the motives behind the US-led invasion on March 20.
Foreign ministers of Iraq's immediate neighbors Turkey, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria, as well as Egypt and Bahrain, said the US had to restore order and then leave so that Iraqis could form their own government.
They issued a joint statement at a meeting in Riyadh saying the Iraqi people must run their country and control their oil wealth.
The ministers said they wanted the UN to play a central role in postwar Iraq, echoing demands made by EU leaders at their summit in Athens on Thursday.
"The Iraqi people should administer and govern their country by themselves, and any exploitation of their natural resources should be in conformity with the will of the legitimate Iraqi government and its people," Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said early yesterday, reading from the statement.
"If what they [the US] intend is the exploitation of Iraqi oil, it will not have any legitimate basis," Faisal said.
US Marines began a planned pullout from Baghdad yesterday morning as part of a handover to the much larger US Army, signalling an end to the fighting phase in the capital.
The Army has more resources to deal with the reconstruction and policing desperately needed in Baghdad, where many residents have no electricity and live in fear of looters.
Baghdad has been divided between Marines who control east of the river Tigris, and Army units occupying the western half. The handover will bring the city under the control of a single commander.
The move is part of a plan to reorganize the overall deployment of US forces in Iraq.
"This country has collapsed. Nothing works -- no phones, no electricity, no schools, no proper medical care, no transportation, nothing," said Roland Huguenin-Benjamin of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Baghdad.
"It's more than bringing in food or tablets of aspirin. The basic services need to be restored and a new civil administration must be set up to answer people's needs," he said.
Washington says it intends to hand over control of Iraq to the Iraqi people after a period of control by a US-led interim administration that will oversee reconstruction. Thou-sands of demonstrators poured out of mosques on Friday demanding the US leave the country and questioning Washington's intentions.
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