WASHINGTON, March 27: The United States will allow the United Nations to play a limited coordination role with the Iraqi interim government that replaces President Saddam Hussein’s government, but will not accept UN control over the authority, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Wednesday.

Mr Powell, seeking to balance world concerns about indefinite US military occupation of Iraq and Pentagon demands for oversight of the new government, said the interim administration should be augmented by a UN coordinator as soon as possible.

But he said Washington would not agree to UN oversight of the transitional authority, to be led at first by a US military commander, while acknowledging the “great utility” of a UN role.

“We didn’t take on this huge burden with our coalition partners not to be able to have significant, dominating control over how it unfolds in the future,” Mr Powell said, referring to the massive US-led military operation.

“We would not support ... handing everything over to the UN for someone designated by the UN to suddenly become in charge of this whole operation,” he told a House budget sub-committee.

“The centre of gravity (would) remain with the coalition, but there is great utility in having the UN play a role,” Mr Powell said.

He stressed that immediately after the fall of the Iraqi government, the US military would take control of Baghdad, but that it would be soon joined by an interim authority made of up Iraqis and then the UN coordinator.

“We will put in place what we are calling an ‘Iraqi Interim Administration’ ... that will provide the nucleus of a new government and will begin to exert authority over various functions of the emerging Iraqi government.

“We will do this with full understanding of the international community and with the UN presence in the form of a UN special coordinator,” he told the lawmakers.

The title and exact role of the coordinator is still a matter of intense discussion between coalition partners and at the UN Security Council, which London is particularly keen to see endorse the position, the secretary of state said.

Some members of the Security Council, notably Russia and France which vehemently oppose the invasion of Iraq, are concerned that any resolution creating such a position would in effect legitimize the conflict and have registered their opposition to the move.

This, coupled with the US and British insistence that the council adopt changes to the UN oil-for-food programme to allow the resumption of humanitarian aid to Iraq, have left Washington somewhat indecisive about the responsibilities of the coordinator.

“The administration is still somewhat all over the map on what it wants, even what it wants the UN role to be, and what it wants the US role to be,” said Sheba Crocker, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington thinktank.—AFP