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Iraqi statesman asks US to curtail military operations

Adnan Pachachi, a respected elder Iraqi statesman encouraged by George W. Bush administration officials to enter postwar politics, criticized the US military on Saturday for its increasingly aggressive operations in Iraq and said they should be suspended while an interim Iraqi government is formed over the next month.

Pachachi said that military sweeps through civilian areas with mass arrests, interrogations and gun battles, intended to suppress the remnants of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's Baath Party and military command, were inflaming sentiments against the US and British occupation.

He predicted that if such sweeps continued they would be "exploited by the Baathists" and that therefore, "it would be much better if we didn't have these operations."

Pachachi, a former foreign minister who returned to Iraq last month after more than 30 years of exile, emphasized that he supported allied efforts to re-establish security in the country. But he expressed concern about the marked escalation of allied assaults through civilian areas, where guerrilla raids have targeted troop convoys or checkpoints and left 10 US soldiers dead in the past three weeks.

"These incidents will not help to pacify the country," he said, referring to the large-scale military operations. "For now, the quieter it is, the better" for the postwar political process, he added.

Speaking in an interview, Pachachi, who served as Iraq's ambassador to the UN during the 1960s, also called on the top US administrator, Paul Bremer, to allow Iraqis to form their own interim government with only "consultations" with Bremer and the UN representative in Iraq.

He said such a step would go a long way in meeting the rising demands from Iraqis that they control their own political destiny during reconstruction.

The pointed remarks from the man the US Department of State had nudged back into Iraqi politics at the age of 80 are likely to add to the pressure on Bremer to respond to Iraqi opposition groups and religious figures who see a speedy transition to substantive Iraqi control over the political process as an essential step in preventing a backlash against the occupation authority.

Pachachi has been regarded by US officials as a unifying figure on Iraq's rapidly developing political landscape.

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