[A-List] Iraq: coalition carve-up

[Michael Keaney]

Allies carve up Iraq but sideline UN

By James Cusick, Westminster Editor
The Sunday Herald, 4 May 2003

Progress on giving the United Nations the 'vital' role in Iraq promised by
the United States and Britain was described last night by a source close to
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw as proceeding at a 'glacial pace'.

Instead, the US announced this weekend that post-war Iraq will be divided
into three parts that will come under British, Polish and US command, with
six European countries among the 10 nations contributing troops for the
'international stability force'.

The first troops in the new force could be on the ground later this month,
according to the Polish foreign ministry.

The prospect that the UN may play no role inside Iraq 'for months' as the
Foreign Office source suggested, will dismay aid agencies who believe that,
unless the UN is brought in quickly, the humanitarian crisis inside Iraq
will deteriorate.

Oxfam, along with eight other aid organisations, have signed a joint demand
for the UN to be given a central role in overseeing and managing Iraq's
transition to a new government. Unesco officials in Iraq say that basic
services such as sewage and waste disposal are not being provided, resulting
in outbreaks of disease.

Tony Blair is understood to be pressing the US into recognising that,
without highly visible UN involvement , the coalition's peace-keeping
efforts will be regarded as a failure. One government source suggested Blair
was facing 'a struggle without reward' and added: 'The Prime Minister, along
with other cabinet ministers, is pushing for the UN. But progress has been
minimal.'

Although Britain and the US are said to be in the early stages of preparing
a resolution that would give the UN a humanitarian role in Iraq, the source
close to Straw was not optimistic. He said: 'It will be weeks before
anything is written down and months before anything is on the ground.'

Despite schools in Iraq opening yesterday for the first time since Saddam
Hussein's fall from power three weeks ago, any appearance of normality is
tempered by the power vacuum the US-led military authority under Jay Garner
failed to fill.

There is also growing concern over Shia-led political groups attempting to
deliver their own form of civil stability -- especially in Baghdad. It is
feared that the longer the UN stays out, the more confident the until-now
oppressed fundamentalist Shia majority will become of gaining overall
control of Iraq when legitimate elections finally arrive.

That prospect is something Garner's replacement, Paul Bremner, will need to
address when he takes the Iraqi helm and presides over both the occupied
country's reconstruction authority and directs the selection of the
post-Saddam transitional Iraqi government.

The tough message on terrorism delivered yesterday at the end of his Middle
East tour by US Secretary of State Colin Powell will have chimed perfectly
with Bremner's view of the risks the US still faces from the region.

Powell made it clear to states such as Syria and the Lebanon that it should
take measures to halt the activities of groups such as Hezbollah. He said
the 'new strategic situation' following the fall of Saddam in Iraq, and the
publication of the 'road map' for peace between Israel and the Palestinians,
offered new opportunities to resolve long-standing issues which had
encouraged terrorism and prevented stability in the region.