Posted on 04/08/2003 11:34:11 AM PDT by FairOpinion
United Nations chiefs have warned America and Britain today that Iraq is not a "treasure chest to be divvied up" after the war.
UN under-secretary general Shashi Tharoor said the Allies had no rights under international law to engage in any kind of reconstruction or creation of government without the express consent of the Security Council.
Secretary General Kofi Annan is expected to meet Tony Blair and other European leaders this week to hear what they will agree to on post-conflict Iraq.
Mr Annan will be in "listening mode" but will not be advertising the UN's services for tackling Iraq, something which could eventually be a "poisoned chalice", his right-hand man said.
But referring to the US and Britain, Mr Tharoor said this should not be a case of "people dividing up the spoils of a conquest that they undertook".
Mr Blair has reiterated his desire to see the UN play a role in post-war Iraq, but it is not clear how great he and President George Bush want that to be.
Mr Blair said Iraq should ultimately be run by the Iraqi people themselves. However, there is speculation that the US and Britain want to oversee administration in Baghdad in the initial phase after the war.
Mr Tharoor told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: "The only thing that matters ultimately is the right of the Iraqi people to determine their own future, to control their own natural resources and to determine their own destinies.
"What the UN can do is to play a part in bringing that about. But that is the ultimate goal and certainly the UN has no desire whatsoever to see Iraq as some sort of treasure chest to be divvied up."
Under the Geneva Conventions, the Allies have the rights and responsibilities of any occupying power, including the responsibility to look after the territory, law and order, security and the welfare of the people on that territory.
"But that's about it," Mr Tharoor said. "They really have no rights under the Geneva Conventions to transform the society or the polity or to exploit its economic resources or anything of that sort.
"If they need to do more they need to come to the Security Council to get the backing of international law for anything more ambitious than merely being an occupying power in the military sense.
"Let's not forget that Iraq is already subject to a number of Security Council resolutions that remain valid."
Sanctions on Iraq had to be actively lifted, Mr Tharoor added.
"Anything the UN does would require a Security Council mandate, and that includes involvement in reconstruction, involvement in any aspects of governance or civil administration."
On his tour of Europe this week, Mr Annan would like to "get a sense from his point of view as to what he can expect to find himself and his organisation saddled with at the end of a Security Council process that hasn't yet begun", Mr Tharoor said.
If the US went ahead with an interim administration without Security Council backing, there would be "real difficulty in the extent to which other countries would be prepared to recognise this group as anything other than an offshoot or a branch of the military occupation in Iraq".
He added: "The UN is not the kind of private corporation that needs to increase its market share. We have quite enough to do elsewhere in the world and on other issues.
"We are certainly not seeking this assignment which in many cases, I think many aspects, of it would certainly be like drinking from a poisoned chalice."
Tony Baldry, Conservative chairman of the International Development Select Committee, told Today: "At the very least we (the committee) think it's essential that humanitarian organisations are seen as operating under the mandate of the United Nations rather than as reporting to one of the combatants."
in French
So exactly what would they recognize as the Iraqi government? The one which is now being overthrown? That would be convenient for France, since their illegal contracts would still be valid, by UN reasoning -- but exactly who would France deal with? The Iraqi UN ambassador?
Boy, talk about gall!
If they had ever been valid our men and women wouldn't be over there right now.
The Security Council is sooooooo last year...
-- 30 --
Or What? Is France gonna veto? What a joke!
Are you gona throw us out of the UN? Please, do us the favor.
Here are some excerpts from a great article at the weeklystandard.com on the UN’s great work in Kosovo
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/501nlmdb.asp
U.N. Go Home From the April 14, 2003 issue: As it was in Kosovo, the "international community" is a threat to postwar Iraq.
by Stephen Schwartz 04/14/2003, Volume 008, Issue 30
Just then I passed the headquarters of UNMIK, the United Nations Mission in Kosovo. The building, a skyscraper formerly occupied by a successful Yugoslav bank, was ablaze with light. All the windows shone, as if the bureaucrats within were working late. Of course, I knew almost nobody was there; by then they would have headed home to apartments better equipped than mine, where they might even have generators. The structure stood out in the darkness, a symbol of U.N. power in the wartorn province. And it struck me that the contrast between the burning lights and the surrounding darkness was also a symbol--of the gap between the two worlds in the occupied territory, the world of the international authorities and the world of the people. It fleetingly occurred to me that U.N. officials might actually have ordered the lights kept on to taunt the Kosovars with their might--but of course that couldn't be.
THE ELECTRIC POWER SITUATION, still a contentious topic today, was problematic from the beginning of reconstruction. In that same hot July 2000, in the very same plant that failed to produce electricity, I interviewed the chief technical officer of the Kosovo power system, an Albanian. I listened to his litany of complaints about the foreigners--the lack of resources, and the endless appeals to his workers to commit their time and energy whether or not they were paid. What kept the power system going, he said, was "personal appeals and patriotism." In the second quarter of 2000, the 10,000 employees of the system had each been paid a total of 150 deutsche marks, or $77. At the end of our discussion, he suddenly turned to me plaintively and said, "Most of the foreigners I have met here don't seem to care what happens. You seem interested. You must help me. What is your advice to me?" The moment was as disturbing to me as it must have been to him.
Now, nearly four years after the fighting stopped, Kosovo still endures a two-hour power cut every four hours, night and day, and even that schedule is by no means reliable--this in a province that, before the Milosevic era, exported power for hard currency to neighboring Albania and Greece. Ibrahim Rexhepi, economics editor of the Prishtina daily Koha Ditore, wrote on March 21, "The United States promises that the Iraqi people will have a completely different life after the war--salaries, repaired roads, and electricity around the clock--whereas Kosovo, four years after the war, is facing low salaries, a disastrous economy, roads rebuilt and then torn up again, and power cuts, as well as cuts in the supply of water and heat." Estimates of the funds disbursed for the reconstruction of Kosovo range from $2 billion to $9 billion, the latter figure coming from the U.N. As Rexhepi pointed out, "The funds were spent, but Kosovo now is not very different from what it was four years ago."
Maybe it seems unimaginable that Iraq, with its immense oil resources, could ever be without electric power in its cities. But, to repeat, Kosovo once exported electricity, and its power plants were undamaged by the NATO bombing.
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