UNITED NATIONS: Russia, France and other key Security Council members set the stage for a new battle over Iraq on Thursday, signalling that the United States must give the United Nations a broader role in reconstruction efforts before UN sanctions can be lifted.
UN diplomats said that differences in the council are likely to delay agreement on a resolution lifting sanctions at least until June 3, when the latest temporary UN mandate permitting Iraqi oil exports expires.
President Bush appealed to the 15-nation council on Wednesday to move quickly to lift the trade embargo that was imposed on Iraq after it invaded Kuwait in 1990, and let Iraq’s extensive oil resources be made available to get the country back on its feet. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Thursday the council must “accept the fact that with the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime, the need for economic sanctions goes away.”
But Russian foreign minister Igor Ivanov, speaking in Moscow, said that economic sanctions cannot be lifted until a number of conditions required by Security Council resolutions — including proof that Iraq has fully disarmed — have been met.
“This decision cannot be automatic,” he said. “For the Security Council to take this decision we need to be certain whether Iraq has weapons of mass destruction or not.” Russia and other council members maintain that it must be UN inspectors, not the US military, who verify whether the country has been fully disarmed.
French President Jacques Chirac,attending an EU summit in Athens, said that sanctions could be lifted. But he said that “naturally, it is up to the United Nations to define how.”
The EU echoed that demand in a statement issued from the summit: “The UN must play a central role, including the process leading toward self-government for the Iraqi people, utilizing its unique capacity and experience in post-conflict nation-building.”
The Bush administration is reluctant to grant the UN that role, saying that the Security Council failed to meet its obligations when it opposed military action in Iraq. Administration officials now say they view the upcoming debate over sanctions as a test of whether the council is prepared to do its part to improve the lives of Iraqis or simply to rekindle old battles.
“We need not to have everybody go to their corners and talk about theological expressions of what the UN has to be, but all unite now and do what is best for the Iraqi people,” a senior US official said. “The means when it comes time to lift sanctions, it ought to be done because it will benefit the Iraqi people.”
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said it remained unclear how extensive a role the UN would have in Iraq, but noted that it had the capacity to deliver food and distribute humanitarian aid. “I don’t know how it will shake out,” he told a Pentagon gathering. “But the president, I think, recognizes that, having done what we’ve done, and taken the regime out, that this country and the coalition countries have an obligation to see this through.”
The Pentagon has dismissed demands that UN inspectors be sent back to Iraq to verify whether coalition forces discover banned weapons. Instead, US weapons experts have sought to persuade UN inspectors to resign and enlist in the American hunt for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
US and British officials said Thursday that they will try to build momentum in the council towards a common approach to Iraq by seeking agreement in the coming weeks on a series of “easily resolvable” issues.
One such issue might be a resolution spelling out a set of principles, including the preservation of Iraq’s territorial sovereignty and the centrality of human rights, that would govern a future Iraqi government. The United States and Britain are also weighing whether to press the council to appoint a senior UN envoy to coordinate the UN’s activities in Iraq.
They would then move on to the more contentious issues, including the role of UN weapons inspectors, the fate of sanctions, and the future of the UN oil for food programme. That programme — established in 1995 to allow Iraq to sell oil to purchase food, medicine, and other humanitarian goods — requires a new mandate by the council every six months. Its current mandate expires on June 3.
Russia and France were among Iraq’s key trading partners before the war, selling billions of dollars in products through the oil for food programme. They remain concerned that the US and Britain will freeze them out of future commercial opportunities once the programme is ended and sanctions are lifted.
Despite the ongoing dispute, UN diplomats said that there is a stronger basis for council agreement than in early March, when the US and Britain failed to obtain agreement on a resolution authorizing military action.
The Canadian foreign minister, Bill Graham, speaking this week in Vancouver, said he and his government “stand by our reasons for abstaining from the (military) campaign” and he suggested that the UN should play a major role in reconstruction. But noting the “extraordinarily successful” US-led war, he added: “We now seek to be of help in providing humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people and dealing with the challenges of reconstruction.”—Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) The Washington Post
UNITED NATIONS: Russia, France and other key Security Council members set the stage for a new battle over Iraq on Thursday, signalling that the United States must give the United Nations a broader role in reconstruction efforts before UN sanctions can be lifted.
