A soldier from the U.S. Army Third Infantry Division  jokingly flexes for Iraqi onlookers outside the Palestine Hotel April 20 in Baghdad. The army took over control of the city from the U.S. Marines a day earlier.

The United States and its allies will declare victory in the war in Iraq in the next few days, coalition member Australia said on Sunday. Meanwhile, long-time Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi, who is back in Iraq, endorsed a U.S. military occupation of the country for as long as two years, even as some Iraqis took to the streets to protest the U.S. presence. THE U.S. MILITARY have already signaled the end of the fighting stage of the war in Baghdad by starting to pull Marines out of the capital and replace them with U.S. Army troops better equipped to tackle the reconstruction of the battered capital.        But the U.S. forces are still hunting for Saddam Hussein and other top Iraqi officials, and have still not found Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, the justification for the U.S.-led invasion on March 20.

“There’s just some tidying up going on in relation to the final proclamation,” Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told Australia’s Seven Network television.
       “Obviously it has to be absolutely accurate legally. It also has to be a proclamation that strikes the right political tone,” Downer said. “But it will happen in the next few days.”
       Australia, one of a handful of countries which committed troops to the invasion, was being consulted on the wording with Britain.
       Speaking to reporters after Easter services Sunday at Ft. Hood, U.S. President George Bush said that “the liberation of Iraq will make the world more peaceful.” But he stopped short of declaring victory in the Iraq war, saying that would be up to his top military commander in the region, Gen. Tommy Franks.
       In another sign of the next phase of U.S. presence in Iraq, U.S. officials in Kuwait told NBC News that Jay Garner, the retired U.S. general charged with supervising the reconstruction of the country, will travel to Baghdad on Monday to get a first hand look at the situation in the capital.
       Despite the sense that the battle was essentially over, estimates of how long it would take to establish a new system of governance varied widely.
       Sen. Richard Lugar (R.-Ind.) said Sunday he thought it would take at least five years to establish a functioning democracy, and dismissed the notion that it can be done “on the fly” in four or five months. 
       “And this may require training of a new type of civil servant in our country, that is really prepared to come in and bring some hope, some cohesion, to peoples after our military is extraordinarily effective in getting rid of the opposition,” Lugar said on NBC’s Meet the Press.

CHALABI ENDORSES LONG-TERM U.S. ROLE
Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi expatriate who is favored by some administration officials to hold a leading role in the new Iraq, called Sunday for U.S. forces to remain in Iraq until the country holds elections, a process he said could take two years.
       “The military presence of the United States in Iraq is a necessity until at least the first democratic election is held, and I think this process should take two years,” Chalabi said in an interview on ABC television’s “This Week” program.
       A report in Sunday’s New York Times said the United States was planning to seek long-term access to as many as four military bases in Iraq. Pentagon officials said they had no information about the report.
       Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress who many analysts consider to be the top U.S. choice to lead Iraq, said Islamic religious parties could participate in postwar Iraqi politics.

“There is a role for the Islamic religious parties, including Shia (Shiite) religious parties, because they have some constituencies. But they are not going to be forcing any agenda or any theocracy on the Iraqi people,” he said.
       Chalabi said reports of emerging assertions of power by clerics and religious groups in some cities should be viewed as acts of defiance against deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein after a period of repression, rather than a threat to stability.
       “I do not think this should be read as anyone trying to set up an authority or to challenge whatever emerges from the process of an interim authority,” he said.
       Chalabi, the first major exile politician to reach Baghdad since the collapse of Saddam’s government, stood by earlier declarations that he will not be a candidate for office in the country’s interim government.

OTHER DEVELOPMENTS
 • President Bush also said there were “positive signs” Syria was responding to U.S. calls for the country to deny sanctuary to fleeing members of Saddam Hussein’s administration in Iraq. “There’s some positive signs. They’re getting the message that they should not harbor Baath Party officials, high ranking Iraqi officials,” he said.
 • Two F-117A Nighthawk pilots who conducted the opening strike of the U.S. war on Iraq aimed at killing Saddam Hussein and his sons at a compound on the outskirts of Baghdad were awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross medal, the U.S. military said on Sunday.
 • The first postwar convoy of U.N. food aid reached Baghdad on Sunday, opening an aid corridor from Jordan which U.N. officials say should keep the capital supplied with food when stocks run low in coming weeks. The 50-truck convoy, chartered by the World Food Program from private Jordanian firms and carrying 1,400 tons of wheat flour, drove into a city center warehouse compound guarded by U.S. troops.
 • Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said on Sunday that Ankara had agreed in principle to a U.S. request to send Turkish soldiers into neighboring Iraq for postwar peacekeeping duties. Countries including Italy, Bulgaria and Denmark have offered to provide troops to help stabilize and reconstruct the country in the aftermath of the U.S.-led war.
 • Thousands of Christians crammed into churches across mostly Muslim Iraq on Sunday to celebrate Easter, praying for peace and harmony. For many, it was the first time to attend a service since U.S. forces began bombing the city in late March. 
 • Four U.S. soldiers on patrol were wounded Saturday when an Iraqi girl handed them an explosive and it blew up, American military officials said. They said they believed it was an accident. The girl, who appeared to be about 7 years old, approached one of the soldiers with an M-42 “bomblet,” from a cluster bomb. An Iraqi man was killed Friday and three soldiers from the 101st were wounded when an M-42 “bomblet” exploded under similar circumstances.