U.S. troops battled Shi’ite fighters in Najaf on Wednesday and seized a militia commander, while confusion surrounded who will issue orders after Washington hands over to an Iraqi government in five weeks. U.S. officials also offered conflicting signals about who will lead that interim administration. A senior official in the outgoing U.S.-led authority in Baghdad denied that Hussain Shahristani, a nuclear scientist jailed by Saddam Hussein, would be prime minister. Officials in Washington had said he would be. An attack on a busload of Russian power station engineers that killed two of them in Baghdad prompted their company to say it would pull out of Iraq — a setback for efforts to rebuild the country’s infrastructure and a reminder of the challenges Iraq’s new leaders face in organizing elections in the new year. Full Story
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