Global Policy Forum

By Julian Borger, Sarah Hall and Jamie Wilson

President George Bush's top national security advisers yesterday held an urgent debate over whether to seek a new UN resolution backing an international stabilisation force, in the wake of Tuesday's devastating truck bomb attack on the UN headquarters in Iraq.

The Blair government is attempting to persuade a reluctant White House to give the international community a greater say in running Iraq in return for a UN endorsement of foreign troop contributions.

The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, who is due to fly to the UN today, insisted that Britain and the US remained "open-minded" about the UN moving beyond its current humanitarian role. "I started talking to [US] secretary of state Colin Powell last night about this," he added. "Obviously now, given this appalling tragedy ... the UN's role, its practical role and its mandate, will be top of my agenda in New York," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

The talks on how to prevent Iraq slipping into chaos started as the UN ordered a "partial evacuation" of its Baghdad staff to Jordan. The number of victims of the bombing seemed certain to rise well above 20, as it emerged that up to 10 bodies could still be in the debris.

US troops yesterday used heavy lifting gear to remove large pieces of the building as the hunt for survivors was replaced by a more methodical and sombre search for the bodies. At one point troops stopped for what looked like a moment's silence before removing a body. The soldiers mingled with FBI agents hunting clues to whoever set off the bomb that left a 6ft crater. Human remains found in the area of the crater suggested a suicide bombing, said FBI special agent Thomas Fuentes, but laboratory tests were needed to confirm this. He said the attackers packed a Soviet-made lorry with more than 1,000lb of old Iraqi army munitions, including a single 500lb bomb.

As the investigation continued, the administration's national security "principals", including Mr Powell, Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, and Dick Cheney, the vice-president, were due to discuss the UN's role last night in a video-conference with Mr Bush at his Texas ranch. The defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, was in Central America.

An official familiar with the conference agenda said it was unlikely the hawks were ready to compromise over the administration negotiating US command and control of the occupation force and the unquestioned authority of Paul Bremer's coalition provisional authority.

Instead, the administration hawks hope that Tuesday's attack will shock the international community into making a greater military and economic contribution to Iraqi stability. "They are grasping this attack as an opportunity to get more people aboard," the official said. The official added that the new draft resolution under discussion would "call for more troops, more money, more recognition, especially from the Arab states. It will frame the argument that it is not just the US, but the whole international community who loses if Iraq goes wrong."

It could also include a security council instruction to Syria and Iran to make more effort to secure their borders against the infiltration of Islamic militants. Until now, almost all potential troop contributors have told Washington they will not send soldiers without a security council mandate.

Mr Bremer yesterday denied that the situation in Iraq was unravelling, arguing that security was improving across much of the country. However, the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, offered a radically different assessment of the situation. "We had hoped that by now, the coalition forces would have secured the environment for us to be able to carry on ... economic reconstruction and institution-building," he said. "That has not happened." While saying nothing could justify the current violence in Iraq, he noted: "Some mistakes may have been made, some wrong assumptions."

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Policy Forum distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.