Posted on 11/17/2003 5:19:56 PM PST by Brian S
WASHINGTON, Nov 17 (AFP) - The United States wants the United Nations to play a role in its accelarated plan to return power to Iraqis, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Monday after speaking to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
But Powell did not specify exactly how involved Washington wants the world body to be, following months of wrangling on how much authority US occupation authorities are prepared to grant to the United Nations.
"I have been in touch with Secretary General Annan within the last 24 hours to discuss the role the UN might play and to inquire of him how he is coming along with respect to designating a new secretary general's representative for Iraq," said Powell.
"We want the UN to play a role and it is a part of our plan in moving forward," Powell told reporters after meeting German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer.
Powell noted that a UN role was provided for in UN Resolution 1511 which among other things, provides authority for a US-led multinational force in Iraq.
That carefully worded resolution calls on the United Nations to strengthen its "vital role" in Iraq, including the provision of humanitarian relief, and prompting economic reconstruction and development and restoring government institutions.
"I think Secretary General Annan and his staff are anxious to play that role," said Powell.
His spokesman, Richard Boucher, added that "there is already considerable breadth for a UN role that can be played now or somewhere as we go through this accelerated process."
However, the UN role as enshrined in the resolution falls far short of the administrative role some nations, particularly some in Europe, want to see.
Annan earlier said that he was considering how the United Nations could help Iraq set up a new government after the United States agreed to a faster handover of power in Baghdad.
As well as Powell, Annan said he had spoken with Britain's top envoy in Iraq, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, and the current president of the US-installed Iraqi Governing Council, Jalal Talabani.
Annan said he thought the United States would support a UN role in the political process and said he would name a replacement for his special representative Sergio Vieira de Mello who was killed in an August 19 bomb attack, in the "not too distant future."
"We are looking at our own operations, what we can do outside Iraq, what sort of cross-border operations we can do and, the circumstances permitting, how we operate in Iraq," Annan said.
Annan has in the past been highly critical of the limited role the United States was willing to give the United Nations in Iraq.
Under an agreement between the US envoy to Iraq, Paul Bremer, and the US-backed Iraqi Governing Council unveiled over the weekend, a provisional Iraqi government is to be formed by June, named by a transitional assembly to be elected by the end of May.
The Governing Council said that a new government would be elected and a constitution drafted before the end of 2005.
Washington has stepped up the transfer to Iraqi self-rule amid deteriorating security and rising US troop deaths.
But President George W. Bush said Monday that despite speeding up the transfer of power Washington was not looking for an easy way out.
"I assured these women that America wasn't leaving," he said after meeting Iraqi women leaders. "When they hear me say that we're staying, that means we're staying."
"That's precisely what the terrorists want ... is to try to drive us out of Iraq. We will succeed."
Fischer meanwhile welcomed US moves to speed up the handover of power in Iraq as "an important step" after meeting Powell.
"I think it is an important step forward in the right direction," Fischer said, adding that it was crucial to strengthen the legitimacy of the process of handing sovereignty back to Iraqis.
Influential US Senator Joseph Biden meanwhile called on the administration to go much further on bringing on board international help in Iraq.
He called for a High Commissioner for Iraq, who would report not just to President George W. Bush but an international board of directors, modelled on similar positions in Bosnia and Kosovo.
Biden also called for NATO to take on the task of restoring security to Iraq, from overstretched US forces.
col/mk
US-Iraq-UN
Versus "Cut and Run"...
Time will tell. Watch what "they do" not what "they say"...
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