Baghdad, Iraq ? Iraq’s American administrator said Thursday he hoped to get government ministries up and running by late next week, and if necessary “we’ll buy the furniture” for them in this looted and burned-out capital.

Jay Garner said little, however, in his first Baghdad news conference about the potentially explosive issue of naming top political leadership for Iraq. In a possible sign of trouble, an important Shiite Muslim cleric said that sect’s highest authority would refuse to meet with the Americans.

U.S. troops, meanwhile, made a new catch in their pursuit of the top figures in Saddam Hussein’s toppled regime. Tariq Aziz, the former deputy prime minister and one of the most visible members in the leadership, was in custody, U.S. Central Command announced Thursday.

Aziz’s capture meant 12 of the 55 most wanted members of the regime were now in custody, and Sen. Bob Graham, former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Thursday night the arrest of another top Iraq official, in Syria, would be announced shortly.

In Baghdad’s streets, people pressed on with their daily struggle to restore some normalcy to life two weeks after the U.S.-British invasion force ousted Saddam, took control of Iraq and set off a rampage of looting and arson by Iraqis.

Electricity, knocked out during U.S. bombing in early April, was only slowly being restored. Supplies of clean pumped water, dependent on electric power, remained largely cut off. Almost all shops remained closed. In a still mostly lawless city, looters picked at buildings not yet emptied of fixtures and merchandise.

“We need security, we need peace, we need law,” a writer and retired English teacher, Youarash Haidou, told Garner at a “town hall meeting” that started the retired general’s day in Baghdad, after he spent two days touring northern Iraq.

The meeting, staged in a giant conference hall behind the security of U.S. tanks and combat troops, was attended by no more than 60 university professors and government bureaucrats, all men, chosen in some undisclosed manner.

Retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, director of the office of reconstruction and humanitarian assistance to Iraq, checks his new office space during a visit to Baghdad's Republican Palace. Garner said Thursday the governmental

¢ Arab officials called for U.S. and British troops to leave Iraqi immediately, in a statement issued after talks on reviving an economic boycott of Israel.¢ Thousands of National Guard and Reserve forces who left civilian lives and jobs for the war in Iraq will be heading home soon, the Pentagon said.¢ U.S. oil engineers predicted about 8 percent of Iraq’s prewar oil production would be pumping again within days — enough to satisfy as much as three-quarters of domestic consumption.¢ Iran rejected U.S. accusations it is interfering in Iraq, and called for the United Nations to run an interim government in the country.¢ U.S. officials warned the self-proclaimed “mayor” of Baghdad not to arm his followers. No recognition or support would be extended to recently returned exile Mohammed Mohsen al-Zubaidi, Garner said.¢ U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called on the U.S.-led coalition to respect international law as the “occupying power” in Iraq, drawing ire from U.S. officials at a meeting in Geneva, Switzerland.¢ Baghdad is getting about one-fourth its usual supply of electricity but won’t be fully powered until engineers get parts to repair transformers and power lines.¢ In Kut, assailants twice fired on a U.S. Marine command amid rising tensions between U.S. troops and followers of a Shiite cleric who claims control of the southern city.¢ U.S. Marines have begun patrols along Iraq’s border with Iran to apprehend fleeing pro-Saddam officials, help Iraqi exiles who are returning home and block the entry of potential troublemakers.