New Iraqi Leaders May Tour Nation

SHANNON, Ireland —  The U.S.-led coalition is considering sending Iraq’s planned caretaker government on a get-acquainted tour of the country and the region to help the yet-unchosen leaders win acceptance, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Sunday.

The move could satisfy a number of world leaders who are concerned that Iraqis and outsiders may not understand or support the appointees, Powell said.

The secretary noted that at a meeting of the Group of 8 industrialized nations on Friday, several officials called for “transparency” in how the interim leaders are selected and how they run the country until an elected government is installed.

The get-acquainted tours would be “a basis for allowing [them] to gain acceptability to their neighbors and the international community,” Powell told reporters as he flew back to Washington after a 22-hour visit to Jordan for the World Economic Forum.

U.S. officials believe that sending the new officials to meet their people and leaders of neighboring countries could also help Americans win other nations’ support for a United Nations Security Council resolution that could give international blessing to the next stage of Iraq’s government, he said.

The tour proposal is a reminder of the delicate situation facing U.S. officials as they try to hand over sovereignty to Iraqis on June 30. Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations envoy crafting a structure for the new government, has said that he wants to install a number of nonpolitical and “faceless” administrators to oversee the government.

Iraqis and neighboring governments may be suspicious of the goals and connections of the caretaker government, some diplomats say. They may also be wary of some members of the U.S.-picked Iraqi Governing Council if they retain power in the new government, as some U.S. officials have suggested.

On Friday, French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said at a news conference in Washington that in recommending a new government, “we have to check that the ministers are acceptable in the eyes of Iraqis themselves, and recognized by Iraqis.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei V. Lavrov agreed.

Officials of the new government will be chosen by the end of May, U.S. officials say. One Iraqi official, Adnan Pachachi, acknowledged Sunday on CNN’s “Late Edition” that Iraq would probably need “external help” from coalition troops in confronting “the dangers of Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations” after the hand-over.

The Bush administration supports Pachachi, a former foreign minister of Iraq, as president of the interim government. He is a member of the Iraqi Governing Council.

Powell had said Friday that “we would leave” if asked to do so by the interim government, though he added that such a request was unlikely. On Sunday, Powell noted on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that while U.S. forces did not want to remain in Iraq “one day longer than we have to ... , [the Iraqis] need our troops there for some considerable time in the future.”

“They need our financial support,” Powell said. “They need the reconstruction effort that is underway. And, frankly, they need the U.S. armed forces and the other coalition forces ... to help create an environment of security and stability” as Iraq prepares for national elections.

Powell was asked about his February 2003 address to the United Nations that cited purported mobile weapons production facilities as evidence that the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was illegally building weapons of mass destruction.

The Los Angeles Times reported in March that some of the information Powell cited came from a discredited defector, code-named Curveball, who appeared to have been providing inaccurate information.

Powell said he was “concerned” that the evidence he used to make the case at the U.N. was based on faulty intelligence.

“There was multiple sourcing for that,” he said. “Unfortunately, that multiple sourcing over time has turned out not to be accurate. And so I am deeply disappointed.

“But I’m also comfortable that, at the time I made the presentation, it reflected the ... sound judgment of the intelligence community. But it turned out that the sourcing was inaccurate and wrong and in some cases, deliberately misleading. And, for that, I am disappointed and I regret it.”

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Times staff writer Tom Hamburger in Washington contributed to this report.