WASHINGTON, April 26 (UPI) -- The Pentagon has begun sending a team of Iraqi exiles to Baghdad to help the temporary U.S.-led government there, a published report said Saturday.
The exiles are supposed to take up positions at 23 Iraqi ministries, according to The New York Times. They will work closely with American and British officials under Jay Garner, the former general charged with reconstructing Iraq's civil institutions and physical infrastructure.
The group was assembled two months ago and has been working from an office in suburban Virginia, the report said.
The team is headed by Emad Dhia, an engineer who left Iraq 21 years ago and who will become the top Iraqi adviser to Garner.
Victor Rostow, a Pentagon policy official who is serving as a liaison to the Iraqi team, said its task would be to help Garner "turn over functioning ministries to the new Iraqi interim authority after a period of time."
Dhia, who is on a leave of absence from the Pfizer pharmaceutical company in Ann Arbor, Mich., worked with the Pentagon to select other members of the team, many of whom were drawn from his organization, the newspaper said.
They include engineers, civil administrators and other professionals, some of whom served in Iraqi ministries in the 1970s and 1980s before fleeing the country, the officials said.
"It's something we have always dreamed of," Dhia told the Times, "that we go back and we establish democracy in Iraq, and help our people recover from 34 years of brutal dictatorship."
