March 22, 2003	Saturday	Muharram 18, 1424

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BRUSSELS, March 21: European Union leaders on Friday promised aid for Iraqi war victims but failed to heal their rifts over the rights and wrongs of the Gulf conflict.

The bloc’s two-day summit highlighted a new Franco-British discord on Iraq, this time over the setting up of a new post-war order in Baghdad.

French President Jacques Chirac, who opposes the Iraq conflict, slapped down calls by British Prime Minister Tony Blair for a new United Nations resolution on the post-war administration of Iraq.

“France will not accept a resolution to legitimize military intervention and give the belligerents — the United States and Britain — the right to administer Iraq,” Mr Chirac told reporters.

Such a move would merely be an after-the-event justification for the military solution, insisted Mr Chirac.

The French president’s comments came after feuding EU leaders managed to sidestep their differences over Iraq and issue a statement pledging humanitarian aid and calling for a “central” United Nations role in Iraq “during and after the current crisis.”

Mr Blair told reporters this reflected a “common” European- American view on the need for a new UN resolution to put in place a “post-Saddam civilian authority” but Mr Chirac immediately rejected the idea.

Mr Chirac and Mr Blair also fought it out earlier this month over a UN resolution which would have authorized a military action against Iraq, with Britain later accusing France of having sabotaged British and American efforts to secure such an agreement.