U.N. Nation Builder Was a Reluctant Envoy to Iraq

After two years of nation building in Afghanistan, the last place U.N. troubleshooter Lakhdar Brahimi wanted to go was Iraq.

But with opposition to Washington’s political transition plan mounting and the clock ticking on the way to the scheduled June 30 hand-over to an Iraqi authority, the only thing all sides could agree on was this: They wanted Brahimi to be there.

The Algerian diplomat arrived in Baghdad on Saturday after weeks of planning so secret that only a few top United Nations officials knew he was going. But by Sunday, it seemed that someone from every group in Iraq knew he was there and was jockeying to see him.

He took the helm of the team of U.N. electoral and political experts, which had been led by the U.N.’s Carina Perelli, during a tough mission. They must sound out competing Iraqi interests and find a way to select a government that all sides find legitimate.

They must do it without appearing to take sides, and they must not let the U.N. be forced into a role that is larger than it is willing and able to handle. But trickiest of all, Brahimi said before going, is letting the solution come from the Iraqis, because they are the ones who will have to live with it.

The situation is “intensely political and highly charged,” U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Monday, and that is why he chose Brahimi to lead the effort to determine whether direct elections can be held this spring. Annan said he would announce his conclusions this month.

For Brahimi, 70, whose four decades of peacemaking in hot spots from Lebanon to Afghanistan have made him a U.N. legend, it was an offer he couldn’t resist. Despite his protests that he was too old and too tired to take on the task, he knew he was perfectly suited to it.

First, there is his unparalleled experience. He helped orchestrate the Bonn conference of Afghan leaders that created the country’s interim government and helped guide the national assembly that agreed on a constitution.

Like Sergio Vieira de Mello, his predecessor in Iraq who was killed in the August bombing of the U.N.’s Baghdad headquarters, he is known as a careful listener who can persuade opposing parties to move in the same direction without feeling they are being pushed.

He knows Iraq well and even sat down with Saddam Hussein in 1998 to arrange a meeting with Annan to defuse a crisis with U.N. weapons inspectors.

But the former Algerian foreign minister also has special credibility in the Arab world because of his origins and his skillful mediation that helped end the Lebanese civil war in 1990.

“He’s a hero there, enormously revered,” said Fatemah Ziai, a U.N. political advisor who worked closely with him in Afghanistan for nine months. “When we went to Lebanon for an Arab League summit, people were giving me poems to pass on to him to thank him -- all these years later.”

That is why President Bush, who doesn’t think immediate elections are possible, requested his services, and Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who is demanding such a vote, asked for him by name. It’s also why Annan, his longtime friend and boss, told him he must go.

That’s not to say that Brahimi, the master negotiator, didn’t try to say no. After an arm-twisting session in Washington last month, national security advisor Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell walked Brahimi to the Oval Office so Bush could add his personal appeal.

When he saw Bush, Brahimi threw his arms up and said: “Help me, Mr. President. They’re trying to send me to Iraq!” But if it wasn’t what he wanted, at least he arrived there on terms that softened the landing.

Brahimi received assurances that the U.S. would accept the team’s recommendations, even if they weren’t Washington’s preferred option, said an official familiar with the White House meetings. He also asked that the U.S. return to the Security Council to clarify the U.N.’s mandate in Iraq, something the administration has been reluctant to do.

Brahimi agreed with the Bush administration that direct elections are probably not technically possible -- or politically advisable -- before June 30.

But one of his diplomatic hallmarks is a willingness to change course -- what he calls “navigation by sight.” No matter how carefully one has mapped the route, he says, it is the unmarked rock just under the waterline that can upset the ship.