Although the new Iraqi interim government that took office Tuesday will not have full authority for another month, it already has the headaches of a formidable task -- gaining enough credibility among Iraqis to be able to exercise at least a minimum degree of power.

This is unlikely to be seen by most Iraqis as a legitimate government because it wasn't elected by anybody, and I don't think anybody will view it as independent. Having an old-time CIA asset be the prime minister seems a recipe for derision.

Juan Cole, a professor of Middle East history at the University of Michigan

After days of bruising, behind-the-scenes negotiations involving U.S. officials and U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, members of the Iraqi Governing Council -- the 25-member body viewed by a wide spectrum of Iraqis as American puppets -- emerged victorious in re-establishing themselves in the new government.

This very success will make it difficult for the leaders who took over on Tuesday, many analysts and Iraqis say. They point to the choice for prime minister of Iyad Allawi, a controversial businessman and recipient of CIA largesse, as particularly likely to spur public dissent.

Allawi's tenure on the Governing Council has prompted widespread rumors of corruption and influence peddling, including repeated accusations that he charges "commissions" to deliver government contracts to Iraqi companies.

"This is unlikely to be seen by most Iraqis as a legitimate government because it wasn't elected by anybody, and I don't think anybody will view it as independent," said Juan Cole, a professor of Middle East history at the University of Michigan and the author of Informed Comment, an authoritative Web log about Iraq. "Having an old-time CIA asset be the prime minister seems a recipe for derision."

Even analysts who have supported the Bush administration's conduct of the Iraq war say Allawi and his Cabinet will have to work hard to dispel Iraqis' suspicions.

"The first thing we have to accept is that any Iraqi government and its political leaders are going to have to establish credibility with their people by being opposed to us," said Eliot Cohen, director of the Strategic Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.

"The fact that we had some pet candidates and (the Iraqi Governing Council) didn't want them, that's a positive development," said Cohen, referring to widespread reports that American diplomats had unsuccessfully tried to install a loyal ally on the Governing Council, Adnan Pachachi, to the largely ceremonial post of president. Instead, the post went to the council's choice, Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawer.

"These are not America's puppets," National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told reporters in Washington.

Allawi and al-Yawer quickly took up the cue, pushing for a bigger slice of sovereign authority than the United States has wanted to surrender. In a speech Tuesday, Allawi thanked the Bush administration for liberating Iraq from the "tyrant" Saddam Hussein, but pointedly said his government would be seeking full sovereignty from the United Nations.

Most Iraqis will be looking first at how Allawi negotiates a status of forces agreement with U.S. military commanders. That task is not likely to be easy because the 138,000 American troops in Iraq have taken over choice real estate -- including the four-square mile Green Zone in the heart of Baghdad. The U.S. troops' frequent road closures and checkpoints have angered countless Iraqis.

In addition, much depends on whether Allawi tries to rein in U.S. counterinsurgency operations and whether he can coax the rebels to lay down their arms. "It's clear that we cannot impose order on that country militarily, and what's needed is a different political situation," said Marina Ottaway, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "But there's nothing in this government for the people who are causing trouble, for the Sunni insurgency, for Muqtada al-Sadr, nothing in which they might take part."

Recent public opinion polling has showed a dramatic increase in grassroots hostility toward the American occupation.

Between October and April, the percentage of Iraqis viewing the United States as an occupier rather than a liberator more than doubled, from 43 percent to 88 percent, according to the Center for Research, an Iraqi polling firm that works for several U.S. contractors. Similarly, the percentage of Iraqis wanting U.S. and coalition troops to leave the country immediately rose from 17 percent in October to 57 percent in April.

Reports from Iraq in recent days suggest that many ordinary Iraqis have become disillusioned with politics altogether and care more about the lack of progress in reconstruction -- the frequent electricity blackouts, mile-long gas station lines, high unemployment, rampant crime and frequent guerrilla attacks that have confounded hopes that the American occupation would bring prosperity.

"Concerning the new government, I can assure you that very few people are looking at what is going on (in politics) because the situation is becoming worse than it was before," wrote one Baghdad resident, a Shiite who asked not to be identified for security reasons, in an e-mail to The Chronicle. "The electricity-cutting hours are more these days, there is a shortage in fuel, the long lines of cars on gas stations are getting more and more everyday, the bombings are more these days, particularly today, there has been many explosions today. People think that since the selected president is from the Governing Council, so nothing has been changed.

"All what people are concerned about is the living and security, no more, no less!"

© 2004 San Francisco Chronicle

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