Excluding Iraqis?

Do the Iraqi people have any say in the administration of their country?

In a HARDtalk interview on 11 February, Dr Isam Khafaji tells David Jessel why he resigned from the Iraqi Reconstruction and Development Council.

Dr Isam Khafaji is a former member of the Iraqi Reconstruction and Development Council, working with the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.

Frustrated by the lack of Iraqi involvement in Coalition reconstruction efforts, he resigned from the Council in July 2003.

the Americans are shunning you outside...you are not allowed to give advice Dr Isam Khafaji

He maintains that America's efforts at nation-building and reconstruction have excluded the views of Iraqis that had been brought in to help.

Speaking to David Jessel he said: "I went full of realism and not optimism, that this is a chance, there is an opportunity for us to push for more openness, more transparency and more democracy. This wasn't based on illusions".

"We went to give advice on rebuilding the state. None of us had this thinking we would become ministers or whatever. After two or three months you see that the Americans are shunning you outside. You are not allowed to give advice."

Simplistic view

Dr Khafaji says that he blamed the Americans for taking a "too simplistic" view towards Iraq by "putting ideology first and reality second."

He pointed to the process of getting rid of the old regime, or "de-Baathification", as sweeping away too many people needed to make change work:

"We have an administrative class, we have state structures which may be corrupt or inefficient, but you have a continuous state structure which has been in place since 1920."

"Since1920 an average Iraqi has no-where to turn to except the state to fix an electricity bill, to make a contract of marriage or to buy a house. And it was so simplistic, so naive to assume that those general directors, those wonderful technocrats who have been suffering from the Baathists, who've been there 20 years, should be cleansed out."

HARDtalk can be seen on BBC World at 04:30 GMT, 11:30 GMT, 15:30 GMT, 19:30 GMT and 00:30 GMT

It can also be seen on BBC News 24 at 04:30 and 23:30