Bush
Aide Says US, not UN, Will Rebuild Iraq
By David E Sanger with John Tagliabuet
5 April 2003
President Bush's national
security adviser said today that the American-led alliance had shed
"life and blood" in the Iraq war and would reserve for itself
and not the UN the lead role in creating a new Iraqi government.
In declaring that the UN would have a secondary role in reconstructing
Iraq and leading the country toward eventual elections, the national
security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, seemed certain to fuel the latest
transAtlantic dispute between the Bush administration and its traditional
allies.
At a meeting in Paris today,
the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Russia issued a statement
referring to the "central role" of the UN in creating a new
Iraq. The French foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, said that
"there should be no discussion either on the principle or on the
terms" of UN participation in Iraq.
Ms Rice's remarks appeared
to diverge somewhat from those of secretary of state Colin L. Powell,
on Thursday. After meeting in Brussels with the French, German and Russian
officials and the foreign ministers of 20 other European countries,
he said that the US was prepared to cooperate with the international
community, and most notably the UN, in a building a postwar Iraq, but
that at least initially, the military coalition would play the leading
role.
Emerging from a meeting in
Washington today with the EU's chief representative for foreign policy,
Javier Solana, Mr Powell continued to walk a line between the pro- and
anti-UN positions, saying, "We're at the beginning of a process
of dialogue, pragmatic dialogue, to determine what the appropriate role
of the UN should be." He said he expected the UN to have a "major"
role, but he did not define what that role would be.
But in the Paris meeting,
the French, German and Russian foreign ministers called for the UN to
be given an immediate and central role in Iraq.
"No country or countries
can hope to win the war alone," Mr. de Villepin said. "Nobody
can hope to build peace alone."
Germany's foreign minister,
Joschka Fischer, who sided with France in opposing the war, said there
was a "very broad convergence of views on the central role of the
UN."
The ministers also called
for the earliest possible halt to the fighting in Iraq.
The Russian foreign minister,
Igor S Ivanov, who joined forces with France last month in opposition
to a security council resolution authorizing the war, said today, "We
must insist today on the earliest possible cessation of hostilities."
Mr Ivanov said it was "premature
to talk of modalities after the war as long as the hostilities continue."
He added, "Our efforts are aimed above all at ending the war and
resolving the humanitarian problems."
Emphasizing that the Europeans
sought a harmonious relationship with the US, Mr Ivanov said, "We
address these words to our partners, with whom we are maintaining dialogue,
since the end of the war can only profit everyone."
But Mr de Villepin criticized
the awarding of contracts to American companies for the reconstruction
of Iraq. French businessmen have grown increasingly nervous recently
over the prospect that the US, upset over French opposition to the war,
might punish French companies by shutting them out of Iraq.
"Iraq is not a cake
or an El Dorado to be divided up," Mr de Villepin said.
But Ms Rice said repeatedly
today that while there was a role for the UN in Baghdad, "Iraq
is not East Timor, Kosovo and Afghanistan" all countries
where the United Nations played a central role.
In blunt terms, she made
it clear that nations that did not join the fighting to oust Mr Hussein
should not expect the leading role in deciding what kind of government
would follow him.
"It would only be natural
to expect that after having participated and having liberated Iraq,
coalition forces, having given life and blood to liberate Iraq, that
the coalition would have the leading role," Ms Rice told reporters
at the White House.
Ms Rice also sought to put
down an internal struggle in the administration over how it would create
an Iraqi interim authority, a temporary organization of Iraqis who would
start rebuilding the country and would ultimately lead to the creation
of a formal government.
Secretary of defense Donald
H Rumsfeld recently urged Mr Bush quickly to install Iraqi exiles
who are in favor at the Pentagon but not at the State Department or
the White House as an interim authority in southern Iraq. This
would give an enormous leg up to to those exiles, including Ahmed Chalabi,
the leader of the Iraqi National Congress, who has insisted on a major
role.
Some of those exiles, not
including Mr Chalabi, met with Mr Bush in the White House today. Mr
Bush did not tell them when he expected a government to be declared
or when the war would be over, but as he left the room, he turned to
the group and without prompting uttered a single word: "Soon."
In her presentation to reporters
today, Ms Rice never mentioned Mr Rumsfeld or the agenda he shares with
some of the administration's more hawkish figures. But she made it clear
that Mr Bush planned to open the Iraqi interim authority to all Iraqis
both exiles and those who are newly freed because of the war
and her words seemed intended to put an end the latest debate
between the Pentagon and the State Department.
"Condi was clearly sending
a message that it's time for Rumsfeld and his friends to back off,"
said one senior diplomat who has been on the other side of this dispute.
A White House official agreed
that Mr Rumsfeld "got a bit ahead of where the president is."
Mr Powell and Mr Rumsfeld
had separate meetings with the president this morning. But Ms Rice noted
that the country would be under the effective control of Gen Tommy R.
Franks, the commander of the Iraq campaign.
Mr Bush has reportedly questioned
in recent meetings how Iraqi exiles, some of whom have been out of the
country for decades, could effectively begin to take over the administration
of Iraqi daily life, from water supplies to schools. But the administration's
bigger fear is that newly freed Iraqis would not have a chance at demonstrating
their qualifications.
This article originally appeared
in The
New York Times