Iraqis push for U.N. role, return

NEW YORK -- Members of the Iraqi Governing Council have stepped up demands that the United Nations return to Iraq quickly and assist the battered nation in its quest for stability and reconstruction.

Key members of the council and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan are to meet in New York on Jan. 19 to discuss the shape of the organization's role in building Iraq's future. It was not clear yesterday who will represent the United States at the meeting.

Prominent Shi'ite cleric Abdel Aziz Hakim, a member of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council, sent a letter to Mr. Annan on Dec. 29 asking the world body for assistance in transferring power from the U.S.-dominated Coalition Provisional Authority to the Iraqi people, the Associated Press reported yesterday.

The letter, sent on behalf of the 23-member council, urges the United Nations to assist the council in figuring out how power should be transferred from the coalition to the Iraqis. The transition is to begin in June, and will progress through elections and the drafting of a constitution.

The United Nations severely cut back its foreign staff in Iraq after a car bombing August 19 destroyed its Baghdad headquarters and killed Mr. Annan's senior envoy to the country and nearly two dozen staffers. Most of the U.N. mission for Iraq now operates out of an office in Cyprus.

Mr. Annan has said repeatedly that the organization will return to Iraq when it has a clearly defined and independent role to play in rebuilding the country, and the security of its premises and personnel can be assured. The Jan. 19 meeting will be critical, U.N. officials said, to determine what role the organization should play before the transition.

The Iraqi leadership has clamored for the United Nations to return, and many nations -- particularly those opposed to the war -- have insisted that they cannot participate in the reconstruction without a leading role for the international body.

The requests for assistance, which have grown louder since the cutbacks after the August bombing, will culminate in a meeting between Mr. Annan and members of the Governing Council. The Iraqi team will be led by elder statesman Adnan Pachachi.

U.S. officials said yesterday that Washington still was deciding who should lead the delegation to the Jan. 19 meeting. One official said it was unlikely to be Coalition Provisional Authority head L. Paul Bremer, the senior U.S. civilian authority in Baghdad, or Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.

"At what level we chose to be represented depends, I guess, on what exactly they will be discussing," one official said. "It will be at least a few days until we know."

Although a "vital U.N. role" has been mentioned in Security Council resolutions and by President Bush and other U.S. officials, there is no clear picture of what that would entail.

Mr. Bush has suggested that the organization would be helpful in providing humanitarian assistance and advice on drafting a constitution and holding elections. But Mr. Annan and other U.N. officials are pressing for a more concrete definition of their role, bearing in mind the prewar Security Council divisions.

"I am looking forward to a good and constructive meeting on the 19th and I expect all the parties to attend," Mr. Annan told reporters Tuesday. "I expect the U.S. to participate. I expect the meeting to be at a senior level."

The United States has resisted demands from France, Germany and Russia -- as well as other European and donor states -- that the organization play a more prominent, even dominant role in Iraq's political and economic rehabilitation.

But the Governing Council -- representing diverse religious, geographic and ethnic constituencies -- has been passionate in its desire to see the organization shoulder some of the work of rebuilding.

In remarks to the Security Council last month, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari chastised the organization for ignoring his country's suffering under Saddam Hussein, and then for bailing out after the bombing at the Canal Hotel headquarters.

"The U.N. as an organization failed to help rescue the Iraqi people from a murderous tyranny that lasted over 35 years, and today we are unearthing thousands of victims in horrifying testament to that failure," he said Dec. 17.

"The U.N. must not fail the Iraqi people again," Mr. Zebari said in a plea for Mr. Annan to return international staff to Baghdad.

"Settling scores with the United States should not be at the cost of helping to bring stability to the Iraqi people. This squabbling over political differences takes a back seat to [Iraqis] daily struggle for security, jobs, basic freedoms and all the rights the U.N. is chartered to uphold."