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Wolfowitz: New Iraqi government will take time
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said Sunday it would take at least six months after a coalition victory before the U.S.-led coalition could hand control of Iraq to the Iraqi people. "We're not there to run the country," Wolfowitz said on "Fox News Sunday." "We're there to hand it over to Iraqis, and this interim authority is a bridge to that process. Our goal is to transfer authority to Iraqi people." In an appearance on CBS' "Face the Nation" Sunday, Wolfowitz said there are two parts to being "in charge" of a post-war Iraq. He said the U.S.-led coalition would deliver to the Iraqi people water, food, medicine and waste management "until we're sure that they can do it." The second part is determining how elections will be held and who will govern Iraq, he said. "We're not in charge of that," Wolfowitz said. "No foreigners can be in charge of that. That has got to be a process that involves Iraqis. "There are some 20 million Iraqis who still live under the boot of this regime. And until they are free to express themselves, we can't know who represents the Iraqi people," he said. Wolfowitz told "Fox News Sunday" that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein still controls large sections of Baghdad. "But it's on its way out. There's no question about it," he said. "It's a shame this brutal regime continues to send young men out to die for a lost cause, a hopeless cause. But the end of this regime is here." Wolfowitz said that after the war, "The Iraqi people are going to have a chance to show the whole world what Arabs are capable of." Wolfowitz said he had no evidence Syria has responded to the Bush administration's demand that it close its border with Iraq and stop shipping weapons there. "It's a strange regime. It's a pretty brutal one in itself," he said. "I don't know what game they're playing but they need to stop." Asked whether he was interested in regime change in Syria, Wolfowitz said, "Our focus right now is in getting rid of this regime in Baghdad." Coalition forces have found no weapons of mass destruction, but Wolfowitz said he suspects Iraqis who know details of the program probably have been rounded up by Saddam's regime and are being terrorized. "The key to finding these things is to get people who know about this in circumstances where they're no longer fearful and intimidated and let them tell us, and we're not at that point," he said. "In fact, most of those people are probably in places where they're being intimidated and terrorized."
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