PARIS, Sept 12: France on Friday prescribed an early transfer of power from the US-led occupation, general elections early next year and an international conference on reconstruction as conditions for supporting a new United Nations resolution on Iraq.

In an article in Le Monde newspaper, Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin warned that without a radically new policy the country risked “entering a spiral with no return” and he said the existing US draft text offers only “limited progress in the role handed to the UN”.

On Saturday in Geneva Dominique de Villepin will meet foreign ministers from the other four permanent members of the security council to try to reach a consensus on a new UN resolution.

Washington’s proposed wording — tabled ten days ago — calls for a multinational force implicitly under US command and endorses the US-installed Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), which is charged with setting a programme for a constitution and elections.

But the French foreign minister said it was untenable to ask the UN to take on an ever greater security and financial burden in Iraq without giving it commensurate power.

“Can one ask the UN to intervene more on the ground without giving it either the capacity to act or the indispensable conditions of security? Can the draft text form a continuation of what has already taken place? ... We do not think so,” he said.

The foreign minister repeated France’s plea for sovereignty to be handed over as quickly as possible to the Iraqi people. “Only the prospect of a sovereign political destiny can nourish hope and allow society to be reconstitute itself,” he said.

The occupying armies should not leave in a hurry — indeed they should stay under US command — but their deployment should be of a fixed duration, and their mandate should be settled by the UN, he argued.

The formation of an Iraqi army should be accelerated with the aim eventually of UN forces securing Iraq’s borders against infiltrators, and indigenous soldiers, De Villepin said.

On the political front, the foreign minister said the IGC should hand over authority to an interim Iraqi government within a month, which would gradually take over executive power.—AFP