Administrators call on police to suit up Sunday

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's U.S. administrators have called on all Baghdad police officers to return to their jobs on Sunday, with a slight change of uniform, to help restore order in the capital.

Some police began reappearing on the streets last week, at times joining U.S. soldiers on patrols, after the devastating looting and arson that followed the U.S. military's takeover of Baghdad and ouster of Saddam Hussein's government.

About 3,000 police officers last week received a first emergency salary payment of $20 each from the American administration.

Jared L. Bates, chief of staff under head administrator Jay Garner, said he didn't know how many more officers might respond to the special call issued for Sunday.

Bates said the police have been asked to return in white shirts, not their old uniform jackets, and to wear their headgear badges on their breast pockets.

DAMASCUS, Syria - Secretary of State Colin Powell will grill Syrian President Bashar Assad today about U.S. suspicions that chemical or biological weapons from Iraq might have been smuggled into Syria and that some leaders of the deposed regime of Saddam Hussein might be hiding here.

"We have seen some performance on their part in terms of responding to our concerns" about Iraqi fugitives, Powell said Friday en route to Damascus. But, he said, "we do have some concerns" about weapons of mass destruction that intelligence sources indicated Iraq might have sent to Syria to prevent their discovery.

Powell will also press Syrian leaders - labeled by the State Department as "state sponsors of terrorism" - to end Syria's military occupation of southern Lebanon and halt its longstanding support of militant Palestinian groups that reject peace with Israel.

Syrian leaders will urge Powell to support an Arab-backed U.N. resolution calling for the Middle East to be free of weapons of mass destruction, Syria's U.N. envoy said Friday. "It is clear that Israel is the only state in the region hindering the establishment of such a zone," Ambassador Mikhail Wehbe said at the United Nations.

TEHRAN, Iran - A leading Iranian cleric urged Iraqis to use suicide attacks to expel U.S. forces from Iraq and learn from Iran's Islamic revolution to set up a new government.

"The Iraqi people have reached the conclusion that they have no option but to launch an intifada (uprising) and resort to martyrdom operations to expel the United States from Iraq," Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati told worshipers during Friday sermons in Tehran.

"Somebody - who has might but not logic - does not have dignity nor shame and doesn't listen to anybody," Jannati said, in an apparent reference to the Bush administration. His speech was broadcast live on Tehran radio.

BASRA, Iraq - Sir Richard Branson used one of his 747s to fly 60 tons of medical supplies into Basra International Airport on Friday - the first commercial airliner to land in Iraq since the war.

The aircraft, piloted by an Iraqi exile who works for Branson's Virgin Atlantic Airways, was also believed to be the first such plane to land in Basra since international sanctions were imposed on the country 12 years ago.

The plane carried medical equipment and drugs for hospitals in Basra and the southern region.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A former American oil executive, Philip J. Carroll, and two senior Iraqi oil officials were expected to be appointed today as the top leaders of the struggling Iraqi oil industry by U.S. officials here, said people who have spoken to the Bush administration, according to the New York Times.

Carroll, who was once chief executive of the Shell Oil Co., the American unit of Royal Dutch/Shell, was expected to be appointed chairman of an advisory committee that will have oversight of the Iraqi oil ministry, those people said.

Fadhil Othman, who served as the longtime acting-director of Iraq's oil exporting arm until his retirement in 1995 and who lives in Turkey, will be the vice chairman of the committee, they said.

The oil ministry itself will be led by Thamir Ghadhban, who served as its director of planning under Saddam Hussein's government and who has taken an active role in reviving the industry since the allied victory.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - American military officials urged parents to send their children to school and teachers to return to work today, the start of the Muslim workweek.

Many Iraqis have been urging the U.S. military to reopen schools, but an Army major, Linda Scharf, said they are advising them to do so today only with caution: The Iraqi military had stored much ammunition inside schools, and so far, Scharf said, only 100 schools had been inspected for safety.

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