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Old Iraq Army Could Provide a Leader, Jordan's King Says (ALAN COWELL, 5/18/04, NY Times)

King Abdullah II of Jordan, a key player in American diplomacy in the Middle East, said Monday that Iraq should be run by a strongman - possibly drawn from the ranks of Saddam Hussein's army - after the United States hands over formal sovereignty to Iraqis on June 30.

In an interview, King Abdullah also said the Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, should have "a long look in the mirror" to decide whether he should yield authority. Such a demand is made frequently by the Bush administration and Israel but rarely voiced so openly in the Arab world.

The king spoke as word began to reach this Dead Sea resort, where a regional conference just ended, that the leader of the Iraqi Governing Council had been killed by a suicide bomber in Baghdad.

The killing focused attention on who might take power after June 30 and raised questions about the security of any Iraqi leader seen as backed by the Americans.

"I would say that the profile would be somebody from inside, somebody who's very strong, has some sort of popular feeling," King Abdullah said, apparently registering disapproval of the former Iraqi exiles at the core of the current leadership.

"I would probably imagine - again, this is off the top of my head - somebody with a military background who has experience of being a tough guy who could hold Iraq together for the next year," he said.

Iraq's military elite, disbanded after the American invasion last year, was made up of Hussein loyalists. But Abdullah indicated that some older officers might not be tainted in the same way as those on America's wanted list.

"There were a lot of heroes; there are strong community leaders who are products of the Iraq-Iran war" of the 1980's, he said. "They are national heroes that do appeal to the Iraqi street."

The king's remarks broke from the traditional protocol that leaders do not comment on their neighbor's succession, and they seem to run counter to American insistence on ridding Iraqi public life of the former elite.

There seems to be an increase in the chatter from the Sunni dictators of the region to impose same on Iraq, lest a relatively liberal Shi'ite democracy set a "bad example."

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 18, 2004 7:04 PM