U.N. Faces New Dangers in Iraq

Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced Tuesday that he would send a team of election experts to Iraq, a move that may significantly increase the United Nations’ influence in the country but presents new political and physical risks.

The danger was underscored by a series of bombings and ambushes Tuesday that left six U.S. soldiers and two CNN employees dead. But Annan said he decided that reengagement was worth the risk after he was asked last week by Iraqi leaders and the U.S.-led occupation administration to help break a deadlock over how to select an interim Iraqi government.

“I have concluded that the United Nations can play a constructive role in helping to break the current impasse,” he said Tuesday in Paris, a stop on a two-week European trip.

Annan said a group of experts would help determine whether elections to form a new government by June 30 were technically feasible -- or politically advisable -- and to seek alternatives if they were not. The group will go as soon as Annan is satisfied that U.S. forces can provide adequate protection, he said.

While the team’s immediate mission is to determine whether swift elections are practical, its verdict is expected to be negative. Annan sent a letter to the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council in early January with that conclusion.

But the team will also sound out Iraqi groups to help find a way for a transfer of power that the majority of Iraqis will consider legitimate, U.N. officials said.

“If the Iraqis can agree on the way forward, then we can have a legitimate and acceptable process, the results of which will be accepted by all,” Annan said. “Otherwise you run the risk that the conflict and the divisions will continue.”

As it now stands, the interim government is to be chosen by caucuses in each of Iraq’s provinces. But with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani -- a key Shiite Muslim leader -- and others in Iraq demanding direct elections, the selection process has been thrown into doubt.

The U.N. team will be led by an election specialist who prepared a report in August, just before the U.N.’s Baghdad headquarters was bombed, that concluded that organizing a vote would be technically possible within six months. But U.N. officials now say that widespread violence would make nationwide polling very difficult, and that premature elections often undermine stability rather than boost it.

“In an immediate post-conflict situation ... tensions arise between different ethnic and regional groups about what kind of future for their country they want, and therefore a great anxiety between majorities and minorities,” said Mark Malloch Brown, the administrator of the U.N. Development Program, which is organizing voting in 30 countries, and will probably prepare elections in Iraq now scheduled for 2005.

“Going to an election without having dealt with any of those issues can be very explosive,” he said. “The U.N. has to start by listening to everybody, making some technical judgments and finding some common ground.”

The U.N.’s return to Iraq, three months after it withdrew from the country following bombings at its building, is partly due to Washington’s belated recognition that the world body can play a role the U.S. can’t. The initial transition plan included no role for the United Nations.

U.N. envoys, for instance, have maintained contact with Sistani, who refuses to meet officials of the U.S.-led coalition. And the U.N.’s involvement could confer an aura of legitimacy to the transition process that has been lacking.

John D. Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Tuesday: “I think, clearly, the United Nations can play an important role in this unfolding political process in Iraq.”

The U.N. is expected to take on an even greater role in Iraq after July 1, when sovereignty is to be transferred back to Iraqis. In addition to organizing elections, the U.N. can lend expertise on so-called nation building tasks such as rebuilding Iraq’s justice system, educating the populace about human rights, providing humanitarian services and establishing civic institutions.

But the U.N.’s involvement before the hand-over represents a risk for the organization, whose officials insist they want to do what’s best for the Iraqi people while protecting the U.N.’s integrity and independence. They also don’t want to be saddled with more responsibility than they can handle -- or blame, if something goes wrong, Brown said.

Maintaining an aura of neutrality will be difficult, U.N. officials say. Annan’s preliminary determination that elections are not possible by the June deadline bolsters Washington’s own conclusions. The U.N. team will rely on U.S. forces to provide security, which may add to the perception that the world body is there to do Washington’s bidding.

Annan’s newly appointed special advisor on conflict prevention, Lakhdar Brahimi, strongly emphasized the need for the U.N. to differentiate itself from the U.S.-led occupation authority.

“When the U.N. goes back into Iraq, it has got to get there with two things,” he told the National Press Club in Washington on Tuesday. “One, a clear identity of its own, and two, to go there with only the agenda of the United Nations, which is ... helping the people of Iraq out of their plight. Otherwise it will be of no use to anybody.”

The Bush administration has been urging Brahimi to become the U.N.’s special representative to Iraq because of the Algerian diplomat’s experience in nation-building in Afghanistan and his credibility among Arab leaders.

Despite a direct appeal from President Bush and top U.S. officials last week and again Tuesday, Brahimi is resisting, seeing their endorsement as detracting from an impartial status.

Farley reported from the United Nations and Efron from Washington.