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UNITED NATIONS: US President George W. Bush will need to show humility with US allies rather than hectoring them this week when he seeks help in rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan, diplomats say.
Keen to share the mounting cost and casualty toll of occupying Iraq, Bush will issue a “call to action” when he addresses the UN General Assembly today, aides say.
A senior US official said the president was convinced the removal of Saddam Hussein “should be a source of pride not just for the (US-led) coalition but for the entire world.”
But a year after he challenged the world body to enforce its resolutions on Saddam, Bush faces resentment at the way Washington went to war without UN blessing yet now contends that other nations have a duty to help the United States.
The Bush administration’s three biggest European allies failed to surmount differences over postwar Iraq at a summit in Berlin on Saturday, casting doubt on whether talks with Bush this week will make progress on a new UN resolution to stabilize and reconstruct the ravaged country.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and French President Jacques Chirac, who opposed the war, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush’s chief comrade-in-arms, could not agree on how quickly power should be handed over to Iraqis.
The United States has drafted a new UN resolution aimed at persuading other states to share the financial and military burden. But France and Germany want a bigger UN role and a timetable for transferring sovereignty to an Iraqi authority within months rather than years.
Bush will meet Chirac today, Schroeder on Wednesday and host anti-war Russian President Vladimir Putin at Camp David over the weekend.
BLAME THE FRENCH: In Washington, the wrangling over a new resolution has revived recrimination against the French, who led a diplomatic campaign to deny UN blessing for the invasion of Iraq.
Sen. Joseph Biden, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urged Bush on Sunday to “outsmart the French” by letting the UN Security Council decide when to turn control back to Iraqis.
Unidentified US officials were quoted as saying Secretary of State Colin Powell’s strategy was to “isolate France” in the UN negotiations. And New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote last week: “France is becoming our enemy.”
In fact, Paris is not threatening to veto the US text or seeking confrontation, and UN diplomats say the real issue is framing a resolution that will give Iraqis a path to self-rule and convince other countries to put in troops and money.
“A weak resolution may command 15 votes, but it may not have any real outcome in terms of changing the situation in Iraq,” said Chilean Ambassador Heraldo Munoz, a member of the 15-nation Security Council.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said last week he would not expand the UN presence in Iraq devastated by a bomb attack in August until the Security Council gave the world body a clear mandate independent of the US-led occupying power.
Senior European diplomats said it would help if the Bush administration showed more humility about the problems it faces in stabilizing the country and a greater willingness to listen to allies and share decision-making.
“They want our money and our soldiers, but they are not willing to share real power, either with us or with the Iraqis,” a European Union official said.
The EU, potentially a major donor to Iraqi reconstruction, has said a trust fund independent of the US-led occupation authority is a key condition for Europeans to contribute at a donors’ conference in Madrid next month.
France, Germany and Russia are unlikely to send peacekeepers, although Schroeder has said Berlin could help train Iraqi soldiers and police.
But their endorsement could provide diplomatic cover for countries such as Turkey, Indian and Pakistan and Bangladesh to contribute troops despite domestic opposition.—Reuters
