by Rory Mulholland
BAQUBA, Iraq - More than a month after Iraqis risked their lives to vote, political leaders in Baghdad are still bargaining to form a national government.
And in cities across the country, like Baquba, local politicians are also still haggling about who gets the top jobs in provincial councils.
"I thought you were going to be governor or deputy governor," Major Teresa Wolfgang, a US civil affairs army officer, told Hafith Abdul Aziz as they sat in the heavily-fortified Baquba council building.
Abdul Aziz was elected in the elections on January 30 -- the first free vote held in Iraq in half a century -- as a Sunni council member for Diyala, a province stretching from just north of Baghdad all the way to the Iranian border. With its mix of Shiite Arabs, Sunni Arabs and Kurds, it reflects the ethnic mix of the country as a whole.
But the 41 new council members are unlikely to back the candidate favoured by Major Wolfgang, who has been advising the outgoing council for several months and is now trying to act as midwife in bringing the new one into being.
While the national assembly will convene its first session in 10 days time and Baghdad province on Sunday had a ceremonial inaugural meeting of its council, not one of Iraqs 18 councils has yet managed to hold its first proper session.
As horse-trading over the line-up of the new national government and of provincial and city councils drags on, many Iraqis who overcame fear of attacks at voting stations on January 30 are starting to ask why the process is taking so long.
The situation in Diyalas provincial capital Baquba, a city of some 300,000, where Iraqi and US security forces are frequently attacked, is particularly complicated.
Abdullah al-Juburi, a dentist who spent many years in exile in Britain, was governor in the last council and was seen as likely to be reelected and become the new governor.
But through a bureaucratic blunder he was left off the electoral list.
And now, Hafith explained to Wolfgang on Sunday, Juburi has received a letter from the central government in Baghdad telling him to stay in the job until the administration has figured out how to resolve the matter.
Wolfgang said council members have been meeting in secret in little groups but have shown a marked reluctance to convene the councils first session.
The councils work, both here and elsewhere in Iraq, is hampered by security restrictions. Eight Shiite members of the outgoing council have been assassinated since October, she said.
The council is housed in a former Baath party headquarters in downtown Baquba in a building nicknamed the Blue Dome. It is surrounded by blast walls, has machine-gun posts on the roof, and has a platoon of US soldiers as well as Iraqi security forces stationed there round the clock.
Wolfgang was keen to stress that her role, and more generally that of the US army, in Iraqi politics was becoming ever more hands-off.
"The First Infantry Division, her army unit, "went from running the council meetings to observing them," she said, adding that in the most recent meetings of the outgoing council she sat at the back, spoke rarely and then only when requested to by council members.
But she readily admits that she will seek to influence matters if she thinks that wrong decisions are being made.
"If theyre going down the wrong path well have a word," she said.
She is also closely involved in trying to get council members to maintain standards.
Hussein Majid was elected as a member for the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni group which had boycotted the elections on the national level.
The IIP took 14 seats in the election, while the Shiite Coalition of Islamic and Patriotic Forces in Diyala took 20 and the Kurdish Alliance seven.
Majid noted that there were also disadvantages to the Americans reducing their role in local politics.
Until January 1, the US army had paid the salaries of bodyguards for council members. Now theyre supposed to be paid by the interior ministry but no money has yet been forwarded, he said.
And other thorny issues are being left up to the Iraqis.
"I told the coalition there was a problem in district councils, where members were putting half the money they get in their own pockets. But they told me this was now an Iraqi problem," Majid said.

03/07/2005 12:42 GMT