Global Policy Forum

By Warren Hoge

Secretary General Kofi Annan gave strong indications on Monday that he would accept a request to send United Nations experts to Iraq, in a move that could help end the stalemate over how to turn over authority to an Iraqi-led government.

Mr. Annan met Monday with top American, British and Iraqi officials from Baghdad. The meeting came after months of ill will between the United States and the United Nations, which refused to authorize the Bush administration's decision to use military action. Last fall, after a fatal bombing at its Baghdad headquarters, the United Nations pulled out of Iraq, citing security concerns and a lack of clarity about its role.

Striking a stance that was at once cooperative and cautious, Mr. Annan told a news conference that he understood the urgency of the issue but that "further discussions should take place at the technical level." Those discussions began almost immediately, with United Nations election experts being briefed on the complicated political plans by which the occupation authority hopes to transfer power to Iraqis on June 30. Diplomats said that despite Mr. Annan's careful public statements, it appeared likely that he would decide quickly to approve the request. A European diplomat who took part in the meeting said, "In my experience at the United Nations, when you say you'll consider something, you've already put your foot on the slope."

The occupation authorities had largely shunned the United Nations in their political planning but have suddenly turned to it now that the most revered cleric among Iraq's majority Shiite Muslims, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has objected to the American plans for a transition and has instead called for direct elections. Thousands of his followers have staged demonstrations backing his plea. A march on Monday in Baghdad drew 100,000. [Page A10.]

According to participants in the meeting on Monday, a representative of the ayatollah gave assurances that he would accept the conclusions of the United Nations experts. The United States has maintained that there is not enough time to organize direct elections. Emerging from the meeting, L. Paul Bremer III, the American administrator in Iraq, pronounced it "a very good, open and candid exchange" and declared, "The encouraging news from today is that the secretary general agreed to consider this request very seriously."

A senior United States diplomat reported that Mr. Annan asked many questions about current conditions in Iraq but appeared interested in finding ways to take up the offer. "We didn't get a yes answer, definitely not, but my sense of the meeting was that he was forward leaning," the diplomat said.

Last month, Mr. Annan sent a letter to Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, the associate who was at the meeting on Monday, saying direct elections might not be manageable in the short time before the June 30 transfer date under current conditions in Iraq. Ayatollah Sistani is reported to have dismissed that letter as one written under pressure from the Americans but also to have said that he might change his mind if a United Nations team came to Iraq and verified the judgment that holding direct elections was unreasonable in the time frame.

On one crucial point for Mr. Annan, he said that while any United Nations activities would be constrained by security considerations, the occupation authorities had promised to do all they could to protect workers. The occupation authorities' invitation to Mr. Annan represented an apparent admission that the United Nations has a role to play in Iraq immediately, not just one after the transfer of sovereignty this summer, a point that Mr. Annan had been seeking to make.

Attending the meeting in addition to Mr. Bremer were Sir Jeremy Greenstock of Britain, the No. 2 official at the Coalition Provisional Authority; John D. Negroponte, the American ambassador to the United Nations; and three other American officials, William Burns, the assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs; Kim Holmes, the assistant secretary of state for international organizations; and Robert Blackwill, who is coordinating Iraq issues for the National Security Council; as well as eight members of the Iraqi Governing Council.

In confronting the request for assistance from Iraq's occupation powers, Mr. Annan faced a quandary. The Security Council refused to approve military action last year, and the United Nations has been excluded by the United States from the political planning that was set last November in an agreement that made no mention of any role for the world organization. Mr. Annan is consequently eager not to appear to be validating a process he had no role in formulating.

Mr. Annan removed international staff from Iraq in October after attacks on relief workers and the bombing of the United Nations' headquarters in Baghdad in August that killed 22 people. The suicide bomb blast on Sunday at the gates of the United States administrators' compound in Baghdad, which killed at least 24 people, underscored the instability on the ground and reminded officials in New York that their people would probably be targets if they went back and associated themselves with the occupying forces.

But if he resisted the invitation to expand the world organization's presence and enhance its role in Iraq, Mr. Annan could end up fulfilling the frequent prediction of President Bush's that the United Nations risks becoming "irrelevant" and going the way of the League of Nations. He is said by aides to be unforgiving of himself for having sent the original United Nations mission to Baghdad without better preparation for its security. Among the 16 staff members killed was the mission chief, Sergio Vieira de Mello. The date of the bombing, Aug. 19, is still a fresh one for people in the East River headquarters, many of whom counted the victims in Baghdad among their friends.

As for what duties United Nations people would have in Iraq, Mr. Annan is concerned that they be assigned to specific areas where they could have impact and not be used just to bring a degree of international legitimacy to the occupation. Mr. Annan has set three broad conditions for the United Nations' return: "clarity" on the scope of the organization's role, security assurances and guarantees that the responsibility would be commensurate with the risk.

The mission to study the election process is a relatively limited one in that context, but Mr. Annan cautioned people on Monday against thinking that a "massive" United Nations presence in Iraq was under consideration now. Late on Monday, the Security Council heard a closed-session report from Adnan Pachachi, this month's chairman of the Iraqi Governing Council, on the situation in Iraq.

At a preceding lunch with Security Council members, Mr. Annan was asked by one of the ambassadors whether he intended to make his decision on the mission to Iraq "sooner or later," according to one of the participants.

He replied, "Sooner."

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