SIGNS OF PROGRESS

The Aussies have been handling air traffic control in Baghdad. Not any more.

For the first time since the war, a team of civilian Iraqi air traffic controllers will walk into the Baghdad tower and begin work. Helping the transition will be Mike McCormick of Miller Place, who is assigned to run the FAA's air traffic control center in Ronkonkoma but has spent the past three months in Iraq.

"It's the first step," Hatfield said in a telephone interview from Baghdad, "in giving the new Iraqi government control over their own aviation system."