By Brian Knowlton
International Herald TribuneApril 11, 2003
The United States will not give the United Nations the primacy in Iraq that several countries favor, though it will seek a UN endorsement of plans for an interim Iraqi authority as well as help with humanitarian aid, Secretary of State Colin Powell has said, in one of his clearest statements on the matter. The United States, along with Britain, its chief war ally, plans to keep close control over the country's physical and political reconstruction, Powell said in an interview published Thursday in The Los Angeles Times.
U.S. military officers are already selecting local Iraqi leaders to help create the interim authority, Powell said. Their first organizational meetings could be held as soon as next week, he added. Europeans and others have called for a broader UN role in overseeing not just Iraqi recovery from war but its political reconstitution. They are critical of U.S. plans to dominate Iraq's remaking. Leaders of three of the complainant countries - France, Germany and Russia - are to meet Friday in St. Petersburg to discuss the matter.
In the meantime, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz laid out with greater clarity Thursday the sequence and nature of the transitional administrative and governing institutions envisaged by the United States for Iraq. He, too, spoke of a UN role limited largely to the humanitarian. An Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, being set up by a retired U.S. general, Jay Garner, will oversee delivery of aid and the provision of basic needs such as water and medical care, he said. Its bureaus, to parallel Iraqi ministries, will have American, British, Australian and Polish advisers. But "it is not a government for Iraq," Wolfowitz said flatly. Some Iraqi ministries will be dismantled, others undone only enough to ensure that "the terror apparatus of the old regime is gone." Once basic services are smoothly running, "their administration would be turned over as soon as feasible to the Iraqi interim authority."
That authority, to represent all religious and ethnic groups, returning exiles and those who remained in Iraq, would "direct the political and economic reconstruction of their country." It would plan local elections and draft a constitution - "a process that foreigners cannot direct." Ultimately, elections based on that constitution would bring a new national government to power.
In a comment that could draw a stony response in Paris or Moscow, Wolfowitz suggested that France and Russia consider forgiving some or all of the billions of dollars owed them by Iraq. The European countries set to take part in the St. Petersburg summit meeting have insisted on a "central" role in Iraq for the United Nations. And the German and Japanese foreign ministers called jointly Thursday for "intensive cooperation with the United Nations on reconstruction," saying it is "essential" that the Security Council pass a resolution laying out a substantive UN role.
Powell, however, used some of the administration's bluntest language to indicate that calls for a "central" UN role were going nowhere. The United States had deliberately chosen the words "vital role," he said, to refer mainly to humanitarian efforts. Echoing the tough message of Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, he said that the war-fighting partners would naturally take priority in shaping Iraq's future. "The coalition, having invested this political capital and life and treasure into this enterprise (is) going to have a leading role for some time," he said.
The suggestion, he said, "that now that the coalition has done all of this and liberated Iraq, thank you very much, step aside and the Security Council is now going to become responsible for everything, is incorrect, and they know it and they were told it." In what seemed something of a turnabout, Wolfowitz, known as much more the hard-liner on Iraq, appeared to leave a bit more leeway than Powell had for Iraqis to decide on a future UN role. "The larger role of the UN will be determined in coordination with the Iraqi people themselves, with other members of the coalition, with the secretary-general and other members of the United Nations," he said. But Wolfowitz also defined the UN role in almost exclusively humanitarian terms. "We need the UN," he said. "We need the UN functional agencies that have historically played a very large role in things like refugee assistance and humanitarian relief."
Some countries sought a UN endorsement of U.S.-led efforts before contributing to them, he noted, and so did such multilateral agencies as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. At the Senate hearing where Wolfowitz spoke, some Democrats challenged him, saying that the administration planned to take on too much in postwar Iraq, while turning away a UN eager to do more. "If we do not have broad international assistance," said Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, "the United States will find itself thrust into the position of undertaking the most radical and ambitious reconstruction of a country since the occupation of Germany and Japan after World War II," costly in "terms of financing and of manpower."
Wolfowitz, however, equated a larger UN role to delay. He said it was important to return full power and responsibility to the Iraqis as quickly as possible. "I don't think we want to see a situation like we do in Bosnia," where the UN retained a role eight years after the Dayton peace accords, he said. Powell, insisting on the need to involve Iraqis immediately in the process ahead, said that American soldiers were already meeting with locals and Iraq to identify traditional leaders able to take part in a nascent governing authority.
"They're starting to identify who in a community are the leaders and traditionally have been leaders for long, long periods of time," he said. "Who do people look to? They look to tribal leaders. They look to religious leaders. You start to build on that." The first meeting would happen in southern Iraq, probably at An Nasiriyah, Powell said. That is where a group of about 700 Iraqi exiles headed by Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress is based. Chalabi, apparently seeking to show independence from the Bush administration, which helped bring his group to An Nasariyah, urged U.S. authorities to send to Iraq as soon as possible the man nominated to head the reconstruction office, Garner. Garner is now working from Kuwait, heading a staff of about 200. "Where is General Garner now?" Chalabi asked on CNN. "The people need assistance here in Nasiriyah. Why are they not here?" A spokesman at Garner's office said he was unlikely to travel to Iraq until the military assured him that the capital was secure, possibly by next week.
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