BAGHDAD – It’s too late for the Bush team to get United Nations help in stabilizing Iraq. Only Iraqis can help them at this point.

But a week in Iraq makes clear that the administration is muffing the chance to get the help from Iraqis that it needs.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the way the administration is treating Iraq’s interim government, the Iraqi Governing Council.

The 25 council members were appointed by occupation czar Paul Bremer after broad consultations with Iraqi political groups and ethnic factions. This has led many to dismiss the council as U.S. puppets. But the council is the most representative government Iraq has ever had.

At the United Nations last week, the Bush administration was promoting new responsibilities for the council to win support for a new resolution from U.N. members. This would be a smart move if it were serious. The council is essential to the holding of Iraqi elections, before which the United States can’t draw down troops levels. And U.S. officials desperately need more Iraqi help to stop the spate of suicide bombings in Baghdad.

But instead of bolstering the council, U.S. officials seem determined to keep it fettered.

“Bremer has the authority. We have nothing,” says one council member bitterly, asking not to be quoted by name.

Recently, the council strongly opposed the U.S. call for Turkish troops to join coalition forces in Iraq. This opposition comes not just from Iraq’s ethnic Kurds, who have a long-standing animosity toward Turks, but also from Iraqi Arabs, who fear historic Turkish claims on their territory.

No council member believes the Turks can calm Iraq’s rebellious central Sunni provinces, populated by many Saddam bitter-enders. On the contrary. They think the Turks will become new targets and the Turkish presence will inspire Iraq’s other neighbors to meddle inside their country.

“If the Turks come, Iran will be able to say it must send troops to protect the holy Shiite shrines in southern Iraq,” says Ahmad Shya’a al Barak, a council member and human-rights lawyer from Hilla.

Yet the coalition authorities insist on inviting the Turks over council objections.

“There’s no compromise,” says the council’s general secretary Muhyi al-Khateeb. “They’re going to bring them in. We think that’s a bad idea.”

Some U.S. officials make no bones of their disdain for the council. Indeed, it “is an odd collection of Kurdish leaders, heads of Shiite religious parties, ex-Baathists, tribal leaders, old Sunni elites, along with independent lawyers and intellectuals. Many of its members seem to prefer traveling abroad to wrestling with Iraq’s difficult problems.

The council has barely gotten equipped with new Dell computers and a couple of aides per member, provided with U.S. money. That said, the Bush administration badly needs to give the Governing Council the power to help the coalition – and Iraq.

Why so? Because the Iraqi Governing Council is what’s out there. There will be no significant help coming from elsewhere. The relationship with our allies and the United Nations has become too poisoned for them to come to the U.S. rescue. And recent weeks have shown that the United States can’t do the job alone. That leaves the Iraqis themselves as the key allies.

Coalition forces need more Iraqi help fighting terrorists, in dealing with radical Shiite clerics, in preparing for elections. They also need more help from Iraqis in training new Iraqi security forces, which are coming on line too slowly to help with urgent security problems.

“They have to give us a real say in the way they are rebuilding the army, recruiting the police, in the way the new intelligence services are put together,” says Adel Abdel-Mehdi, an acting council member.

Most of all, the administration must get over its fear of sharing power with the people it says it wants to help. The Bush team touts liberation. So how can it ride roughshod over deep Iraqi concerns about Turkish troops?

Iraq’s governing council may not be ready for prime time, but its members are asking for partnership. That means U.S. officials must share decision-making – or destroy the credibility of the council.

And then, the United States will truly be ruling Iraq alone.

Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer.