Congress: Powell should control postwar spending (United Nations the battle is on)

WASHINGTON — Congress waded into a feud between the Defense Department and the State Department on Thursday with a strong vote of confidence for Secretary of State Colin Powell.

A war spending bill that is headed for enactment next week contains unusually blunt language that gives Powell, and explicitly not Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, control over $2.5 billion to be spent on postwar reconstruction in Iraq.

The two Cabinet officers were at odds last year over Iraq, but tensions appeared to subside after Powell decided that diplomatic efforts to disarm Saddam Hussein's regime would not work and joined the call for use of military force. But now key members of Congress suspect that Rumsfeld is trying to elbow Powell out of what is traditionally diplomatic territory: postwar reconstruction. (Related story: Europe's contention shifts to rebuilding future)

President Bush established an Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance in the Pentagon, and military officials have told Congress about plans for a postwar Iraq.

The House of Representatives version of the spending bill says the money must be "apportioned only to the Department of State" or civilian agencies. The Senate bill explicitly bars the reconstruction funds from being used for "any Department of Defense activity."

That amounts to a congressional rebuke of the White House. The administration wanted Bush to be able to decide who would use the $2.5 billion. Members of Congress thought that meant Rumsfeld would get the money.

"It has been clear to us for quite some time that the Department of Defense would like to take over the management of relief and reconstruction," Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., said. "Policy and spending decisions regarding postwar relief and reconstruction should be made at the State Department — and nowhere else." Lowey is the top-ranking Democrat on the House subcommittee that controls spending on foreign operations.

The Republican chairman of the panel agrees. Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., says leaving the military in charge of reconstruction would be costly because relief agencies and allies, especially Arab allies, would be be less likely to help. "No country is going to put aid workers under a general," Kolbe says.

The House and Senate worked late into the evening to approve the $80 billion war spending bill.

More than $62 billion would go toward the Pentagon's war costs. The bill also contains $4.9 billion in foreign aid for U.S. allies, $3 billion for financially strapped airline companies, $3.5 billion for homeland security and funding for the FBI, international food aid, public health and embassy security.

In addition to the money for the military and Iraq reconstruction, the House and Senate bills also contain more than $3 billion in aid for airlines.

In the House, there were efforts to retaliate against nations that held back from joining the war coalition. Members rejected, 315-110, an amendment by Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., to strip $1 billion in aid for Turkey. An amendment aimed at barring France, Germany, Russia, China and Syria from winning U.S. funded contracts for postwar Iraq reconstruction appeared likely to fail.

Wednesday, April 2, 2003 10:20 p.m. EST

'U.S. out of U.N.' Movement Gains Momentum

WASHINGTON - The United Nations, which has been infringing on American sovereignty for years while relying on America as its biggest cash cow, may now find that America won’t take it anymore.

Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, has reintroduced his legislation effectively telling that tower of Babel on the East River, "Adios, you’re out of here, and take your Marxist goo-goos with you."

In the past, Paul has managed to get between 30 and 40 of his colleagues to go along with his plan. This year, however, there is popular anger at the U.N., which has bowed to America’s enemies and so-called "allies" in denying support for our action against Iraq.

"We hope to mine that discontent," a spokesman for the congressman told NewsMax.com Washington correspondent Wes Vernon

In 2003, HR 1146, "The American Sovereignty Restoration Act,” as it is called, is gaining support in quarters that were not thought to be sympathetic in the past.

The measure would end all U.S. participation in the U.N. and expel the organization from its taxpayer-subsidized New York headquarters.

"Our current situation in Iraq shows we cannot allow U.S. national security to become a matter of international consensus,” Paul stated. "We don’t need U.N. permission to go to war; only Congress can declare war under our Constitution."

The maverick congressman added: "The Constitution does not permit the delegation of congressional duties to international bodies. The decision to send American troops into harm’s way cannot be made by international bureaucrats."

In the past, such sentiments have been written off as "isolationist," a term tossed around by woolly-headed internationalists who can’t discuss the substance of a given foreign policy issue. But after the U.N.'s disgraceful handling of the Iraq threat, that doesn‘t fly anymore.

In a NewsMax interview last month, author Bill Kristol ("The War Over Iraq") told Vernon that he would be open to the idea of ending America’s relationship with the world body. That was a significant statement coming from an analyst whose family members - before the wild and crazy 1960s - were Hubert Humphrey Democrats who were very much behind the U.N.

Rep. Paul’s concerns go far beyond the U.N.’s failure to follow up on its own resolutions on the bloodthirsty Iraqi regime. Much of his concern, in fact, gets closer to home.

"The U.N. increasingly wants to influence our environmental, trade, labor, tax and gun laws," he contends. "Its global planners simply aren’t interested in our Constitution and republican form of government."

"The choice," says Paul, "is very clear. We either follow the Constitution and republican form of government or submit to global governance. American national sovereignty cannot survive if we allow our domestic laws to be crafted by an international body."

This isn't just another politician sounding off for the cameras. In fact, the Texas Republican (and one-time Libertarian Party presidential candidate) has a wealth of expert opinion on his side.

Noted constitutional scholar Herb Titus has thoroughly researched the United Nations and its so-called "authority" and finds that the U.N. charter is not a treaty at all. Rather, he says, it is a blueprint for supranational government that directly violates the U.S. Constitution.

In other words, the Charter - though sacred to one-worlders for over a half century - is neither politically nor legally binding upon the American people or government.

Here’s Congressman Paul’s bottom line: "The U.N. has no authority to make 'laws' that bind American citizens, because it does not derive its power from the consent of the American people."

Legions of U.S. combat veterans and a growing number of lawmakers now agree: Based on experiences in Korea and Vietnam, U.S. forces should fight under the American flag and only when called to defend America's interests - and not under the auspices of the United Nations.

And here’s another difference between the allied war with Iraq and previous wars in Korea and Vietnam: This time, free of U.N. snoopervision, the U.S. is fighting to win.

Even the first Gulf War - widely hailed as successful - fell short of the mark when a previous president, reluctant to exceed his authority under a U.N. resolution, decided to leave Saddam Hussein in power.

At the White House, Rice said Bush wants exiles and Iraqis currently living in the country to be in the interim authority.

"We will help Iraqis build an Iraq that is whole, free and at peace with itself and its neighbors," she said.

On Thursday, in Brussels, Belgium, Powell met with foreign ministers of NATO (news - web sites) and the European Union (news - web sites) and reaffirmed the administration's view that "the coalition has to play the leading role" in the interim between Saddam's regime and a new Iraqi government.

"But that does not mean we have to shut others out. There will definitely be a United Nations (news - web sites) role, but what the exact nature of that role will be remains to be seen," he said.

Powell continued those discussions Friday at the State Department with Javier Solana, the senior diplomat of the European Union, and he talked by telephone to Kofi Annan (news - web sites), the U.N. secretary-general.

"We are at the beginning of a process of dialogue, pragmatic dialogue, to determine what the appropriate role of the U.N. should be," Powell said.

"The U.N. will be a partner in all of this. Everybody understands that. There's no disagreement about that."

At the joint news conference, Solana said, "We have to continue talking, discussing the subject." But, he said, "the U.N. will have, as the secretary has said, a major role to play."

France and Russia, which opposed the war in the first place and wanted to extend U.N. searches for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, insist that reconstruction should be guided by the United Nations, not the United States or Britain.

"We must stabilize Iraq and the region," French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said Thursday in Brussels. "The United Nations is the only international organization that can give legitimacy to this."

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-war-un,0,2311450.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines

U.S. Needs U.N. OK on Iraq Oil Revenues
By EDITH M. LEDERER
Associated Press Writer

April 4, 2003, 2:02 AM EST

UNITED NATIONS -- The United States will have to go back to the bitterly divided U.N. Security Council for approval to tap Iraqi oil revenues for reconstruction or to award contracts to modernize the oil industry, a senior U.N. official said.

The Bush administration has made oil central to its postwar plans, choosing a former U.S. oil executive to resuscitate Iraq's oil industry and saying it wants to use the nation's vast reserves to finance rebuilding.

But Mark Malloch Brown, administrator of the United Nations Development Program, said Thursday the United States as an occupying power in Iraq doesn't have authority over its oil riches.

Iraq's oil is currently sold under the U.N. oil-for-food program, which is controlled by the Security Council. The proceeds go into a U.N.-run escrow account and are used primarily to buy food, medicine and humanitarian supplies. Even though no oil is being shipped at the moment, only the Security Council can change how it is sold -- and what the money is used for.

Similarly, any U.S.-run administration in Iraq would not be entitled under international law to award American companies major contracts to modernize and run Iraq's oil industry, Malloch Brown said.

"Under the Geneva Conventions, which will be the only international legal framework unless and until there is a new Security Council resolution, you are only as the occupying power able to deal with day-to-day administrative decisions," he said.

For the United States, going to the Security Council to divert oil money to reconstruction or reward U.S. companies will be not be easy, not least because France and Russia have extensive oil concessions in Iraq.

France, Russia, Germany, China and other countries on the 15-member council opposed the U.S. and British rush to war, arguing that Iraq could be disarmed peacefully through strengthened U.N. weapons inspections.

The strong opposition forced Washington and London to drop a resolution that would have given U.N. backing to the war. But days later, they attacked Iraq without council authorization.

Malloch Brown said "emotions are still high" and "a lot of damage has been done" but he held out hope that council members will return to the table to agree on post-conflict arrangements for Iraq.

The United Nations, he said, will be pushing for quick restoration of Iraqi civil authority to control the people and the country's resources, including its oil.

"In the interim, we will equally be pushing for as international and broad-based as possible a management of both the humanitarian and reconstruction (problems)," Malloch Brown said.

He said he believes "the overwhelming consensus of the international community" is that the best way to get from occupation to self-government in Iraq is through U.N. management and a U.N.-brokered political process.

The French, Germans and even the British, the closest U.S. ally, agree that a U.S.-British occupation of Iraq "is going to create huge problems," he said.

Malloch Brown questioned the wisdom of U.S. plans to install an American ministerial team in Iraq rather than rely on Iraq's highly trained bureaucracy.

Philip Carroll, who was president and chief executive of Shell Oil Co., the U.S. arm of the London-based Royal Dutch/Shell Group, from 1993 until his retirement in 1998 confirmed to the Houston Chronicle Thursday that he had been asked by the Defense Department to restore oil production and create new production capacity if needed.

"If you take the oil sector, any potential American oil company investing in the modernizing of those fields will need legal assurance that the concessions that it's granted are secure for a 10-20 year horizon, a kind of payback period for this industry," he said.

But Malloch Brown said Washington has no right to authorize such concessions.

"You are not able to either change the constitution or make legal commitments with the country going ahead many years of any major kind," Malloch Brown said.

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