THE first stop for any dignitary visiting Iraq is the sparsely furnished office of a British officer who has presided over this country’s most successful regime change.

Taking control of Umm Qasr was a thankless task. This nasty little border port town of 45,000 people, home to gun-runners and bootleggers, took far longer for the allied armies to subdue than Baghdad did.

When the British Army was given the job of running it, some in Whitehall suggested that a sheriff would have been a better bet than a military governor for Iraq’s answer to Dodge City. Everyone seems to have guns, and is perfectly prepared to use them.

The first order of business for Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Jones, the new Governor, was to suggest a weapons amnesty. This was a polite way of telling the locals to hand over their guns or he would come knocking on their doors.

If Umm Qasr’s criminal gangs thought they might get some affable, retired general, which the Americans tend to favour as civil administrators, they were disapppointed. Colonel Jones, 42, exudes an air of quiet menace.

He demonstrated his robust approach to law and order early on when he kicked down the door of a local warlord who was suspected of siphoning off fuel intended for Umm Qasr’s hospital. The miscreant has since become a model citizen.

Colonel Jones has set up his own Cabinet. “Originally, I called it the committee, but I thought it sounded a bit communist, so Cabinet it is . . . a grand term for seven people sitting around a plastic picnic table each morning at 9.”

There are few perks of office. His seat of power doubles as his bedroom in the hotel which staff have nicknamed “The White House”.

Others say that it should be called “Sunhill nick”, after the television series The Bill, as all they ever see is an endless procession of local gangsters being frog-marched inside.

The Pentagon may promote fine-sounding ideals about democracy and civics, but for the moment lawless places like Umm Qasr need a firm hand.

Snatch squads of soldiers have raided homes of racketeers and suspected terrorists which has helped to calm local nerves. To introduce a semblance of normality Colonel Jones has reopened schools, provided security so that the hospital can operate and reconnected the electricity supply.The power lasted for a few hours as some looters killed themselves trying to steal a transformer, plunging Umm Qasr back into darkness.

He has 70 people on the payroll, including refuse collectors, water tanker drivers and his Cabinet, members of which get $4 a day. He is anxious to spend more money from the Department for International Development on hiring several hundred more locals.

The problem is that he does not know how much money he has in his budget. The department has been slow to respond to requests for funds. This is not a place where you submit detailed proposals. The Governor has to make it up as he goes along, and to get anything to work, you need cash.

He turned up at the hospital this week with a bagful of money to prove to staff that he would honour their wages.

By his calculations he needs between 3,000 and 3,500 employees, which will cost Whitehall about £8,000 a day, but that, he said, is a small price to pay to put Umm Qasr back on its feet.

He is no economist, but he has ambitious plans to encourage local entrepreneurs and international companies to invest in Umm Qasr which may not be pretty but is handily placed. It sits on Iraq’s only deep sea port, Kuwait is only five miles south and it has plenty of refineries and butane gas plants within its borders. The refurbished port should make Umm Qasr rich but the Pentagon says that it must be run by a private US company which locals have yet to realise.

Colonel Jones admits that he never expected to find himself governing a place like Umm Qasr when he joined the Royal Corps of Transport more than 20 years ago. He served in Sarajevo and Kosovo but accepts that rebuilding Iraq will be much harder. “If I can see progress while I’m here, I’ll he happy,” he said.

Dignitaries are already impressed. General Jay Garner, the man appointed to run Baghdad, has had long discussions with the colonel and said afterwards that Umm Qasr was the model that he would use for the capital.

If Umm Qasr continues to win such praise, then there is no question who Tony Blair’s favourite soldier will be from this war. The locals are so used to seeing convoys of VIPs popping in that they feel it cannot be long before the Prime Minister drops in to see regime change in practice.

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