http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/09/wo...html?ref=world


BAGHDAD, March 8 — When Rahim al-Daraji looks at the dusty lots just east of Sadr City where scores of bodies have been dumped in the past year, he sees a Ferris wheel, a roller coaster, coffee shops and restaurants.


“We should have an amusement park,” said Mr. Daraji, one of two elected mayors in Sadr City, the sprawling Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad where American and Iraqi troops have been peacefully clearing homes since Sunday. “We want to rehabilitate the area so that families can have fun.”

In an interview at his office, Mr. Daraji said the amusement park was one of several projects that community leaders were pushing American officials to finance in negotiations about how to handle the Shiite Mahdi Army, a militia that has controlled the neighborhood for years.

A concentrated makeover of Sadr City, he said, would support the plan’s goals in two important ways: by giving young Mahdi militants jobs as an alternative to lives of violence and by providing residents with proof of the government’s ability to improve their daily lives.

Mr. Daraji’s requests, however, also reflect a broader effort by Iraqi leaders to dart past “clear and hold” to the more lucrative phase of the new security plan known as “build.”

Even as bombings and killings here continue, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has labeled the plan a success. His Shiite-led government has allotted $10 billion this year for reconstruction throughout the country, and, with billions more expected from the United States, Iraqi leaders at all levels are scrambling for a say in how the windfall might be spent.

They are also pressing for veto power over contracts, blaming an unwieldy American system of subcontracting that was impossible to police for the loss or theft of billions in reconstruction dollars since the war began.

Iraqi figures, political veterans and up and comers are seeking an advisory role.