U.S., Britain Present U.N. With Resolution on Iraq

The United States and Britain presented a draft resolution to the United Nations on Monday endorsing a sovereign Iraqi government and authorizing an initial one-year mandate for the U.S.-led force there.

But several key Security Council members said that the proposal does not make clear whether the new government would have full authority over Iraq’s security and when foreign troops would leave. They said that raised the question of whether there would be a true handover of power on June 30.

“We need to give more say to Iraqis, to strengthen their role and the role of the Security Council,” said Ambassador Wang Guangya of China. “There are many elements that need to be filled out, like the relationship between the interim government and the multinational force.”

President Bush, in his speech Monday to the Army War College in Pennsylvania, pledged that Iraqis would have full authority over their country and said his administration was committed to gaining more international backing for Iraq’s transition.

British and American diplomats told Security Council members that in the race against the June 30 deadline, they needed to start working on areas they could and said they intended to fill in the blanks before the handover. They are aiming for a vote by early June but concede that the date could slip.

“The interim Iraqi government will assume total responsibility for its own sovereignty,” British Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry said before the Security Council met to review the proposed resolution.

The first blank to be filled in is who will be running the country in 36 days. Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N.’s special envoy to Iraq, has been assigned the task of selecting a president, prime minister, two vice presidents and 26 ministers to run the country until elections can be held before the end of January 2005. After weeks of canvassing Iraqi ethnic, religious and civic groups, he is expected to announce his choices by the end of this week.

In the meantime, the resolution seeks the Security Council’s blessing for the yet-to-be-named interim government to take power on June 30. It gives the Iraqis control of their own affairs and resources, including oil revenues, and endorses the timetable for democratic elections of a transitional national assembly by the end of the year “if possible, and in no case later than 31 January 2005.”

The measure proposes that the U.S. would continue to lead a multinational force, including a separate unit of about 2,000 troops to protect U.N. staffers working on human rights and helping prepare elections. A senior U.S. official said Monday that several countries that are not involved in Iraq are interested in providing troops for the U.N. brigade, though there are no new commitments yet.

But security -- and who is ultimately responsible for it -- is a sticking point. The resolution sets no date for the troops to leave, although it calls for a review after 12 months, or earlier at the request of the elected government. France, Germany, China, Chile and Russia would like to have an earlier reassessment or to simply leave the force’s mandate to the new Iraqi government to decide.

“We don’t want just to play with words. If we say ‘transfer of sovereignty,’ it has to be a transfer of sovereignty,” said a French diplomat. “There have to be visible changes at significant moments. We think that efforts should be made to make the transition more visible.”

Deputy U.S. Ambassador James Cunningham acknowledged that “there is nothing in the resolution that says that anybody has the authority” to ask the foreign forces to withdraw.

“But the United States has said that we will leave if there’s a request from the government to leave,” he said.

The relationship between the interim government and the U.S.-led multinational force is also unclear and will be defined in a letter to the Security Council before the vote, Parry and Cunningham said.

The resolution does not say who will control Iraqi forces, whether they will have the ability to “opt out” of military operations, and who will oversee Iraqi police and prisons.

The letter to the Security Council is expected to confirm that Iraqis will control their own military forces, police and prisons. U.S. officials also have said recently that the Iraqis should be able to stay out of some particularly sensitive military operations, an issue that also is expected to be addressed in the letter.

Other gray areas, including the interim government’s ability to make laws and contracts, would be defined in a letter from the government-in-waiting after Brahimi announces its members, British and American diplomats said. Brahimi has said that the interim government should refrain from tying the hands of the elected government that will follow it.

The contents of the letter from the interim government would be referred to or endorsed in the Security Council resolution, but not spelled out, said a senior U.S. official.

That ambiguity makes some diplomats uneasy.

“We have been given many assurances about the security partnership with the Iraqi government,” especially about Iraq controlling its own police and prisons, said Chilean Ambassador Heraldo Munoz. “Why not put it in the resolution? It would be a good political signal.”

But most diplomats said that the resolution was more accommodating than they expected. Unlike previous negotiations on Iraq, U.S. and British diplomats held extensive consultations with council members before introducing the text.

“I don’t see insurmountable differences,” Munoz said. “But there’s a lot of work to be done.”

French diplomats said privately that they had ruled out a veto.

“I do think we’re going to have plenty of noise, plenty of argument, but nobody should think we have any deal breakers,” a senior State Department official said Monday. “It’s going to be messy, but in the end, we’ll work it out.”

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Farley reported from the United Nations and Curtius from Washington.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Timetable for sovereignty

The draft resolution proposed Monday by the United States and Britain provides a timetable for transferring power to a sovereign Iraq, even as a U.N.-sponsored multinational security force remains in place.

2004

June 30: Interim government of Iraq takes authority; Coalition Provisional Authority eliminated.

Late summer/fall: National conference convenes.

2005

Jan. 31: Deadline for direct elections of transitional national assembly.

After elections: Constitution drafted, providing for elections of a national government.

June: Twelve months from resolution, United Nations reviews mandate of multinational force.

Source: United Nations, Associated Press

Los Angeles Times