“The press did not question the raising of the American flag over Iwo Jima back in 1945.”Not everyone was gung-ho, even in George Bush’s home state of Texas. “If the US is not careful in its words and deeds, if the UN is not sufficiently involved, many in the Middle East are more than willing to interpret Iraq’s liberation as a new form of colonialism,” the Houston Chronicle wrote.And Roberta Palmer of Oregon wrote to The New York Times saying: “Reports of our troops walking through the rubble of a presidential palace, sitting in Saddam Hussein’s chair and pulling down statues make us look less like an army of liberation and more like the Visigoths sacking Rome.”. America is struggling to put together a meeting of “free Iraqis” next week – a delicate venture that has been made even trickier by the killing yesterday of two leading clerics in a bloody incident at one of Shia Islam’s holiest shrines. The internal figures have been selected by the CIA.America was starting to “identify who in a community are the leaders and who have been leaders for long, long periods of time”, Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, told the Los Angeles Times “Who do people look to? They look to tribal leaders They look to religious leaders. You start to build on that.” But as the killings in Najaf showed, even those religious leaders can be divisive, rather than unifying, elements.A priority next week will be to overcome mutual distrust and rivalry between opponents of Saddam Hussein who stuck it out inside Iraq, and the exiles – some of them suspected of riding in on the back of the Allies, back to a country that they hardly know.Such misgivings are especially directed at Mr Chalabi, a divisive figure even in Washington. Favoured by the Pentagon but deeply distrusted by the State Department and the CIA, Mr Chalabi was ferried from a temporary base in northern Iraq to Nasiriyah last week by the US military.But the White House has quietly moved to thwart a meeting of exile groups that Mr Chalabi intended to convene today or tomorrow – widely seen as a pre-emptive strike of his own to ensure a dominant INC role in the transition. For public consumption, the Bush administration insists it has no favourites, and that Iraqis themselves must choose their own representatives..

The technology company Psion, which made its name selling handheld computers, appointed Alistair Crawford, the highly regarded former chief executive of the IT services company CMG, as its new chief executive yesterday. He will also take a seat on the supervisory board of Symbian – a private technology firm founded by Psion that remains its biggest shareholder with a 25.3 per cent stake.After Psion exited its handheld computer operations two years ago, it was left with its Teklogix arm, which provides supply chain technology, and the stake in Symbian, which makes technology that powers mobile phones and handheld devices.Mr Crawford said: “This is a great time to be joining Psion. The company has a strong core operating business in Psion Teklogix and it is poised to gain considerable value from its Symbian joint venture. Meanwhile, there is potential to build on the Psion name, which remains a great British brand.”Ian McElroy, Psion’s current chief executive who headed Teklogix before Psion bought it, is retiring, as planned, at the end of June but will stay on the board as a non-executive director.

The chairman, David Potter, the who founded Psion – which stands for Potter’s Scientific Instruments Or Nothing – will head up the business for two months until Mr Crawford joins.Mr Crawford was most recently chief executive of LogicaCMG’s European operations after Logica’s chief executive, Martin Read, won the battle for the top job at the combined business.After two months in that role, however, Mr Crawford announced his resignation, saying he wanted to be a chief executive again, having spent most of the past 14 years at the helm. He walked away with a year’s salary of about £350,000 but is still helping LogicaCMG with its integration.Mr McElroy has been chief executive of Psion for just a year. He was parachuted into the top job after his predecessor, David Levin, was poached by Symbian.. Scottish & Newcastle broke with tradition yesterday and named an outsider to take over as chief executive, ending an 11-month search for a successor to Sir Brian Stewart, the executive chairman. Mr Froggatt, 54, will initially replace Guy Dickson, the former managing director who retired in December, but will assume executive responsibilities in July, when Sir Brian steps aside to the role of non-executive chairman.Analysts said Mr Froggatt would have his work cut out to restore S&N’s credibility after a disappointing year that has seen the company’s shares more than halve.