Running Postwar Iraq Next Battle

Despite its early military successes, the United States on Friday was winning less diplomatic backing than it had hoped for its efforts to rebuild Iraq.

The Bush administration had expected that wavering nations would rush to support the U.S.-led attack once it began, but the antiwar camp hardened its stance. France and Russia have made it clear that they consider the U.S.-led war to be illegitimate and will fight any international diplomatic moves, even involving humanitarian aid, that might appear to justify it.

French President Jacques Chirac said on Friday that only the United Nations had the power to run postwar Iraq and threatened to veto any resolution that would allow the United States and Britain to administer the country -- even though no such resolution has been formally proposed yet.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the U.S. already was contributing $105 million to the U.N. and other agencies for humanitarian relief for Iraq. He declined to say whether the U.S. would agree to give the U.N. a political mandate or limit it to only a humanitarian role.

French and Iraqi opposition at the United Nations delayed a U.S.-led effort to put U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in charge of running the program that uses Iraqi oil revenue to pay for food and medicine for Iraqis. The program, run by the Iraqi government under U.N. supervision, provided daily rations to about 60% of the more than 22 million Iraqis.

Annan suspended the program Monday and evacuated U.N. staff in anticipation of the U.S.-led attack on Iraq. At a Security Council meeting, the chief of the oil-for-food program, Benon Sevan, said that he had people waiting at the border to revive food distribution once authorities give him approval.

“The question is, which authorities?” a diplomat asked.

In private, U.S. and British diplomats fumed that the French were willing to jeopardize humanitarian aid efforts to the Iraqis in order to register their antiwar stance. A French diplomat said such criticism was “totally unfair.”

Diplomats were to work on a compromise plan over the weekend and expect to resolve the matter by next week.

Chirac said France would reject any United Nations resolution that would permit the U.S. and Britain to administer Iraq. “That would justify the war after the event,” Chirac told reporters in Brussels.

That France -- and to a lesser extent, Russia -- are fighting is a sign of their continuing resentment that the U.S. and Britain skirted the United Nations to wage war.

“You have some countries saying, if America wants to invade, make them pay” for Iraq’s reconstruction, said Jeffrey Laurenti, executive director of the United Nations Assn. of the U.S.A., a U.N. think-tank in New York.

The U.S. and Britain are considering three resolutions to address humanitarian relief and postwar rebuilding for Iraq.

The first, being prepared in the council for a vote next week, would transfer the authority for the oil-for-food program from the Iraqi government to the U.N. secretary-general.

Iraqi Ambassador Mohammed Al-Douri read a statement from the Iraqi government slamming Annan, accusing him of doing the bidding of the United States and Britain and violating the U.N. charter.

A second resolution, which hasn’t been proposed yet, would address longer-term humanitarian issues.

The third is the one that worries Chirac. It would address who should govern Iraq and oversee reconstruction, including politically sensitive -- and potentially lucrative -- oil and construction contracts.

The U.S. ambassador to the U.N., John D. Negroponte, dismissed claims that the U.S. and Britain wanted to control Iraq’s oil. “We will ensure that Iraq’s natural resources, including its oil, are used entirely for the benefit of the people of Iraq,” he said Friday.

In Moscow, Russia’s foreign minister told parliament that an American occupation of Iraq would be illegal. President Vladimir V. Putin said the war could destabilize Russia and the former Soviet republics.

“The crisis has spilled beyond a local conflict and is now a potential source of instability in other regions,” Putin said. “The war against Iraq is fraught with unpredictable consequences, including increased extremism.”

In another setback, the U.S. request to nations to expel Iraqi diplomats triggered an angry backlash from two Muslim countries and polite rejection even from an American ally, the Netherlands.

Washington earlier had asked nations to expel Iraqi diplomats deemed spies or security threats, and many complied. But the U.S. request went further, asking countries to suspend relations with the Hussein regime, kick out Iraqi diplomats, close embassies and freeze their assets and documents “so the people who are there now can’t steal them,” Boucher said.

By Friday, at least seven nations had rejected the request: Indonesia, Malaysia, Algeria, Finland, the Netherlands, France and Russia.

“The U.S. can’t dictate to other countries,” Indonesian Vice President Hamzah Haz was quoted as saying in reports from Jakarta. “It is only us who can decide our own foreign policies.”

The Netherlands said it had no plans to expel Iraqi diplomats -- in part because flights from Amsterdam to Kuwait have been suspended -- but would “keep a close eye on them.”

Two nations, Australia and Bulgaria, said they would follow Washington’s lead in kicking out diplomats. Other nations were considering the request.

“That is their choice,” Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said. “We believe that as we watch this regime come to an end, it would be appropriate to let all of our friends know that it was time to cease the activity of the Iraqi missions in their countries.”

The United States maintained diplomatic relations with Nazi Germany, fascist Rome and militarized Tokyo until the outbreak of World War II in December 1941, even though American allies had been at war with those nations for years before that, Laurenti said.

“For diplomats of some smaller countries, there’s always the feeling that you don’t want to set the precedent of kicking others out rudely and abruptly when they have no home to go to, when, who knows, in the future some state with heft may try to have you kicked out,” he said.

Iraqi ambassador to the U.N., Al-Douri, said that the three Iraqi diplomats in Washington already have left the country, but vowed he will not go.

“I will be here for days, for month, maybe years,” he said. “I belong to the United Nations, not the United States.”

Strained relations between European leaders appeared to sour further on Friday. A summit of European Union leaders in Brussels ended with the three antiwar members, France, Germany and Belgium, agreeing to hold a summit on integrating their armed forces and did not invite pro-war Britain.

Relations between Chirac and British Prime Minister Tony Blair were frosty. And Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder succeeded in thwarting initiatives proposed by Britain with regard to Iraq, exposing anew the deep divisions that the crisis has opened in Europe.

Paris and Berlin both rejected any EU resolution that included references to the war as having been provoked by Iraqi leader Hussein. In the end, the summit produced only a tepid joint statement on the need to help Iraq rebuild after the war.

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Efron reported from Washington and Farley from the United Nations. Times staff writers Henry Chu in Berlin and David Holley in Moscow contributed to this report.