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PARIS, May 7: French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said on Wednesday US-led forces could not guarantee durable stability in Iraq, and urged the deployment of a multinational force with UN backing.
Mr Villepin, who with President Jacques Chirac personified French opposition to the Iraq invasion, also said a temporary administration assembled by the United States must be replaced with an authority backed by the United Nations.
“The stabilization force risks offering only limited and temporary solutions, it is only an enlarged coalition around the US-British nucleus,” Villepin said in an interview with regional newspaper Ouest France.
“To securely anchor stability and democracy in Iraq and in the region, it is necessary to assemble a force which brings together the international community and which is within the framework of a (UN) Security Council mandate,” he added.
France was ready to consider the participation of NATO in such a force, within the framework of the United Nations.
Relations between France and the United States deteriorated sharply in the run-up to the war in Iraq when Chirac vowed to veto a UN resolution paving the way for the use of force against Baghdad.
The United States has appointed former State Department counter-terrorism chief L. Paul Bremer as the top civilian administrator for Iraq while it seeks to assemble a government with an “Iraqi face”, made up of returned exiles and locals.
“The key issue is the establishment of a legitimate Iraqi authority,” Villepin told parliament during a question session.
“The coalition is putting in place a provisional solution. A process that cannot be questioned must swiftly follow, one which must involve the whole international community, that is to say the United Nations.”
US military officials have said it could take up to two years before regular elections are held in Iraq.
“The main aim remains the formation of a legitimate political authority in Iraq,” Villepin told Ouest France.
“Its full recognition by the Iraqis, the neighbouring countries and the international community requires a significant participation by the United Nations.”
GERMANY REJECTS PROPOSAL: Germany rejected on Wednesday a proposal by Warsaw for German troops to team up with Polish and Danish soldiers to keep the peace in part of postwar Iraq.
Poland stunned Germany on Tuesday when its defence minister, Jerzy Szmajdzinski, proposed in Washington that a Polish-led stabilisation force in Iraq could be based on an existing joint Polish-German-Danish corps.
“The participation of German soldiers in such a common mission is not planned and so will not take place and Germany’s policies remain consistent,” Bela Anda, chief German government spokesman, told a regular news conference.
A German defence ministry spokesman said the corps Warsaw had mentioned had only been established in 1999 and was not yet certified by NATO.
Germany was one of the fiercest opponents of the US-led war in Iraq, ruling out involvement of its soldiers even if the invasion had won UN backing.
Defence Minister Peter Struck suggested on Tuesday Germany might be prepared to send peacekeeping troops to Iraq and was quoted in a newspaper interview on Wednesday as saying NATO would discuss Poland’s proposal next week.
Mr Struck told the Leipziger Volkszeitung he had not been consulted in advance about the proposal but it should be examined “very carefully” and he would discuss it during a visit to Denmark starting on Wednesday.
Despite German surprise at the proposal, Anda said relations with Warsaw were good ahead of a Polish-German-French summit on Friday.
A foreign ministry spokesman noted how much Germany had done to break a deadlock at a European Union summit last year to ensure Poland became a member when the bloc expands eastwards.
Struck, who visited Washington this week to start patching up ties, said the row over Iraq was now history.
“We should all look forward,” he said. “It makes no sense to continue to discuss the past.”
But Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said in an interview with Die Zeit weekly that the war would still not win legitimacy even if it led to a new order in Iraq and the Middle East.
“Internal human rights violations cannot alone be a sufficient reason for a military intervention,” he said. “All other peaceful means must be exhausted and a serious threat to peace and stability or the danger of genocide be present.”—Reuters
