IRAQ: US does not recognize Al-Zubaidi as Baghdad ‘governor’

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Att.Editors: The following item is from the Qatar News Agency (QNA)

BAGHDAD, Apr 21 2003 (IPS) - The United States does not recognize Mohammed Mohsen al-Zubaidi, a former exile who says he is governor of Baghdad, a senior US official said on Monday.

Barbara Bodine, coordinator for central Iraq in the US civil administration overseeing reconstruction, said Washington thinks his deputy cannot represent Iraq at an emergency OPEC meeting this week

Mohammed Mohsen al-Zubaidi declared last week he was chief of an interim council to run the capital.

– We don’t really know much about him except that he’s declared himself mayor," said Bodine, a former US ambassador to Yemen.

ôWe don’t recognize him. There hasn’t been a process of selection. Once there’s a process, then whomever."

Al-Zubaidi said he was a member of Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress and was elected by people representing clerics, academics, Muslim Shiites and Sunnis, Christians, writers and journalists.

However, neither he nor US officials have explained how or when the elections took place and who organized them.

Al-Zubaidi’s self-styled deputy, Jawdat al-Obeidi, said on Sunday he would lead an Iraqi delegation to the emergency meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries starting on Thursday in Vienna.

ôHe can’t," said Bodine during a visit to Baghdad by Jay Garner, the retired US general heading the US civilian administration for postwar Iraq.

ôI don’t think OPEC would take him. We wouldn’t prevent him but I would find it odd that OPEC would accept him as a representative," she said.

Top OPEC officials said Iraq had not yet formally asked to send a delegation to the meeting.

ôAs of now we have no request from Iraq to be represented at the meeting," OPEC Secretary-General Alvaro Silva told Reuters. ôWe’re faced with a very irregular situation in Iraq and these matters will have to be decided by the ministers."

The OPEC meeting to review market conditions and output policy was called after oil prices dropped by about 30 percent in one month.

US officials had said it was possible nobody would represent Iraq at the OPEC meeting. One OPEC source said last week the cartel had invited Saddam’s oil minister, who is on a US wanted list.