A King's Advice

AMMAN, Jordan -- Where should the United States be heading in Iraq, after the capture of Saddam Hussein? I put that question yesterday to Jordan's King Abdullah, and his answer is likely to chill any sense in Washington that the going will now be easy.

The Jordanian monarch warned that even after seizing the former Iraqi leader, the U.S.-led coalition may have difficulty meeting its timetable for transferring political responsibility to the Iraqis by next July. And he argued that if the Bush administration hopes to defuse the Iraqi resistance, it should move quickly to give the country's Sunni Muslim minority a greater stake in the new Iraq.

"If the United States hands it over to the Iraqis too soon, when they're not ready to be able to stabilize the country, then my concern is that you would be back into difficulty," the king warned.

Abdullah spoke in the living room of his house in Amman's suburbs the day after the world watched a bearded, hobo-like Hussein in U.S. custody. Abdullah said he had heard the news on television, and that he found the images of the dazed and submissive former dictator "somewhat surreal."

"I hope this is the start of a new era," he said. But he outlined some of the concerns he expressed to President Bush in a meeting earlier this month about U.S. strategy.

"We have to be realistic," Abdullah said. "The situation on the ground is going to take much more time. . . . We have to understand that there is a small window of opportunity over the next several months, probably until February or March, for coalition forces to address some of the major issues of instability." If the United States didn't solve these problems soon, he stressed, "then July would be a major hurdle to overcome."

The king said his conversations with Bush had been "very frank" about some of the "disconnects" that have been hindering U.S. policy in Iraq. His summary Monday of those discussions was equally blunt.

"My concern was -- and still is, even after the capture of Saddam -- that time is limited to be able to give a transfer of power," Abdullah said. He noted that Jordan has agreed to train many thousands of Iraqi military, police and intelligence personnel but cautioned: "It takes time."

Abdullah said he urged Bush to create "a strong balance between Sunni and Shia in Iraq," rather than tilting toward the Shiites, who represent an estimated 65 percent of the population. He said the coalition should "make sure we don't alienate the Sunnis, which I still think is a major problem we have not addressed fully."

The Jordanian king, a Sunni Muslim himself, recommended several steps to reduce tensions with the Sunnis, who have been waging a bloody campaign against U.S. occupation in their strongholds north and west of Baghdad. He urged the Americans to reach out to Sunni tribal leaders and to ease the de-Baathification process. "The heavy-handedness of de-Baathification has gone to the point that Sunnis are alienated," he said.

One way to ease Sunni fears, Abdullah said, would be to count Iraqi Kurds as Sunnis in assigning relative political weight to the two Muslim sects. Though the Kurds are Sunnis, they do not consider themselves Arabs and were repressed by Sunni leaders such as Hussein who have controlled modern Iraq.

Abdullah also said he thought the Bush administration was placing too much faith in the ability of Iraqi Shiite Muslims to act independently of their co-religionists in Iran. "It is naive at this stage to bring yourself into that sense of false confidence," he said.

The Jordanian king confirmed reports that in a September meeting with Bush, he criticized a leading Shiite on the Iraqi Governing Council, Ahmed Chalabi, complaining that Chalabi had sought to block a Jordanian role in Iraqi reconstruction. "I got support from the president that if Chalabi continues to create problems for the future of Iraqi-Jordanian relations, to let him know and he would seriously address the issue."

Abdullah said that relations with Chalabi had improved since then. He said that despite Chalabi's conviction by a Jordanian court on charges of bank fraud, a settlement would be negotiated "state to state" if Chalabi became part of a new Iraqi government.

The bracing critique by Abdullah, a key U.S. ally, suggests that more tough times are ahead in Iraq. The United States may have captured Saddam Hussein, but it has a long way to go in putting the fractured pieces of Iraq back together.

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