U.N. Has a Part in Rebuilding Iraq, Powell Says

On a fence-mending mission to Europe, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell assured NATO allies Thursday that the United Nations would have a part in rebuilding postwar Iraq but insisted that the lead role belonged to the United States.

“We all understand that the U.N. must play a role,” Powell told reporters after a series of meetings at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters in Brussels.

But “one must also remember that it was the coalition that came together and took on this difficult mission,” he said of the U.S.-led effort to forcibly oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. “When we have succeeded ... the coalition has to play a leading role in determining the way forward.”

Powell’s remarks came on the second day of a hastily planned trip to Europe to shore up allied support and to restore some civility in what has become an increasingly acrimonious relationship between the United States and countries opposed to the war with Iraq. The meetings Thursday studiously avoided rehashing the debate over the rationale for the war to look ahead to what is to happen after it.

Virtually every foreign minister from member countries of NATO and the European Union was present, in what was the first high-level international summit on Iraq since the start of the war.

Officials spoke of a broad “emerging consensus” about the need for international organizations such as the United Nations to help reconstruct Iraq. A senior European diplomat said most NATO ministers at the table reiterated to Powell the necessity of U.N. involvement in the process.

The United Nations is “the body, the tool of international legitimacy,” Dominique de Villepin, the French foreign minister, told reporters. “Their contribution will be absolutely essential.”

In his public comments, Powell agreed in principle that the United Nations should be involved.

But the devil will be in the details, none of which the conclave addressed Thursday.

Specifically, European officials are eager for the United Nations to have a strong administrative role in the political future of postwar Iraq, rather than let the U.S. dictate the agenda. Pentagon political strategists in the Bush administration, however, want to install their own handpicked transitional leadership in Iraq, in effect confining the U.N.’s role to overseeing economic redevelopment and the distribution of humanitarian aid.

“We want to ... initially put in place an interim authority so that a government can be raised from that interim authority,” Powell said.

The new leadership would include people currently in Baghdad, as well as “individuals who have fought long and hard for many years outside the country for the liberation of Iraq,” said Powell, in a veiled reference to Ahmed Chalabi, the exiled head of the Iraqi National Congress and the Pentagon’s preferred candidate to replace Hussein.

Powell held out the possibility that new resolutions would be drafted and introduced at the United Nations to define the world body’s role in rebuilding postwar Iraq.

Powell and others said that NATO too may play a role in peacekeeping, an idea floated by Washington last year but shelved amid the growing hostility between the U.S. and Britain on the one hand and France and Germany on the other over whether to use force against Iraq.

The clash has brought the transatlantic alliance to its lowest point in half a century and boosted European anger against the United States to new highs.

Thursday’s meetings were designed to try to start healing the rift, but suspicions toward American diplomacy -- and Powell -- remain, with one influential German newspaper calling him a “mediator of such damaged stature.”

“I don’t believe that I’m a symbol of failing U.S. diplomacy,” Powell said tartly in response to a reporter’s question at a news conference. “U.S. diplomacy is alive and well. That’s why I’m here today.”

Powell sped from meeting to meeting Thursday with individual foreign ministers, and several diplomats made a point of talking about the air of cooperation that reigned during the group talks, despite lingering grievances.

“It’s been a difficult period to go through, but I think today’s meeting shows that the worst is behind us,” said NATO Secretary-General George Robertson.

During the last week, Paris and Berlin have given the United States conciliatory signals with an eye on their relations with Washington after the war. France and Germany are also interested in securing a voice -- as well as business contracts -- in Iraq’s reconstruction.

De Villepin, one of the most outspoken opponents of the war, declared this week for the first time that France wants to see the U.S. and British forces prevail. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer made the same point, though less positively, by saying he hoped that Hussein’s brutal regime would collapse.

De Villepin noted Thursday that the countries remain united on other fronts, such as the global fight against terrorism.

Another point of agreement was the need to push forward on a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, whose conflict most European governments see as inextricably linked to the war in Iraq.

European officials have lobbied the U.S. to breathe new life into the stalled peace process by unveiling a “roadmap” for a settlement. Powell said he would do so once Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority confirmed its newly appointed prime minister.

In addition to the split between the U.S. and some European allies, the debate over Iraq also has exposed divisions within Europe over how much its foreign policy should be tethered to Washington’s.

A senior European diplomat said Thursday that the region must find its own voice. “We can’t base European policy on criticizing America,” he said. “We can’t base European policy on persuading the Pentagon.”