Split in Bush crack team more apparent than ever

Powell rejected the suggestion. The State Department, for its part, sought to limit the role in Iraq for Iraqi exile leader Ahmed Chalabi because officials there viewed him as a fraud with little backing inside the country.

The Pentagon’s civilian leadership, populated with Chalabi supporters, responded by airlifting him into Iraq with hundreds of exile troops. He is now in Baghdad, attempting to build a political base.

At the heart of many of the disputes are complaints by conservatives inside and outside the administration that the State Department bureaucracy is thwarting President Bush from carrying out a forceful agenda to stop terrorism and confront enemy states — a point that former House speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga, a member of a Pentagon advisory committee who is close to Rumsfeld, plans to make in a speech on Tuesday morning at the American Enterprise Institute.

Gingrich said he plans to call for a major overhaul of the State Department, including hearings on Capitol Hill and an examination of the department by a task force of retired foreign service officers. He said he wanted to contrast the success of a transformed Defence Department. ‘‘The President is on record for supporting a Palestinian state in three years,’’ the senior State Department official said. ‘‘We’re the only one trying to do what he wants to do.’’

Gingrich also said the Agency for International Development (AID), an arm of the State Department, has bungled the reconstruction job in Afghanistan and needs to be transformed in an ‘‘agile and effective outsourcing agency.’’ Rumsfeld and Powell have clashed over AID’s role in Iraq, though ultimately Powell agreed to have AID report directly to Jay M. Garner, the retired general hired by the Pentagon to run postwar Iraq.

Gingrich said the ‘‘final straw’’ that caused him to speak out was Powell’s announcement that he planned to visit Syria. Rumsfeld and other top Pentagon officials had lashed out at Syria, accusing the country of aiding Saddam Hussein’s government and allowing top Iraqi officials to flee.

Powell’s statement helped cool the diplomatic fires. But Gingrich said Powell should not visit a country that he said was obviously linked to terrorism. ‘‘Powell allowed himself to be convinced to go to Damascus’’ by the department’s Near East Bureau, which Gingrich said ‘‘appeases dictators and tries to be nice to corrupt regimes.’’

The State Department official noted that Bush said over the weekend that Syria appeared to be cooperating in response to US concerns, in effect endorsing Powell’s approach. Powell has been widely credited for turning around the morale of the State Department, winning more money for the department, improving the management of the department and promoting talented career civil servants.

An independent assessment of Powell’s tenure by a group of former ambassadors, released last month by the Foreign Affairs Council, concluded Powell has made huge strides in winning resources for the department, changing its culture and improving its public diplomacy and congressional relations efforts. (LAT-WP)