U.N. approves U.S.-led mandate

A unanimous U.N. Security Council yesterday agreed to a U.S.-British resolution outlining the political future of Iraq and giving a clear international mandate to the U.S.-led security mission in the country.

The 15-0 vote represented a major diplomatic victory for the Bush administration in the world body. Many of the countries most strongly opposed to the U.S.-led war to oust Saddam Hussein, including France, Germany and Russia, voted for the new resolution.

President Bush, in Sea Island, Ga., to host the Group of Eight summit, called the vote “a great victory for the Iraqi people.”

A free and democratic Iraq will be a “catalyst for change” across the Middle East, Mr. Bush added.

The seven-page resolution formally declares an end to the occupation of Iraq by June 30 and sets in motion a process to create an internationally recognized interim government, a new constitution and a permanent government by the end of next year.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, arriving in Sea Island yesterday, said the world’s leading powers had come together after the bitter debates of the past two years.

“We all now want to put the divisions of the past behind us and unite behind the vision of a modern, democratic and stable Iraq that can be a force for good, not just for Iraqis but for the whole region and thus the whole world,” Mr. Blair said.

Although the resolution needed four drafts and weeks of negotiations to satisfy skeptics on the Security Council, U.S. officials said yesterday the final text contains virtually all the goals set out by Mr. Bush for Iraq’s future.

The hardest bargaining came over the relations between the new interim government and the 160,000-strong U.S.-dominated security force in Iraq.

The resolution gives the interim government the right to order U.S. forces to leave Iraq and sets a January 2006 expiration date for the mandate of the multinational force.

But American troops will remain under direct U.S. command, despite efforts by France and Germany to give the new Iraqi authority the right to veto politically sensitive U.S. military operations such as the recent siege of Fallujah.

An exchange of side letters between Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi lays out plans to consult on “sensitive offensive operations” against insurgents. The language proved enough to win over doubters, making yesterday’s unanimous vote a foregone conclusion.

The vote also gives the Iraqi government a strong measure of international legitimacy, something the outgoing Iraqi Governing Council, handpicked by U.S. authorities, never enjoyed.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said in an interview with CNN that the resolution “takes away the concept of occupation, which I would say was the main reason for many of the difficulties we have been going through since liberation.”

But it is uncertain how the resolution will contribute to another prime U.S. goal — getting more countries to contribute troops to the troubled Iraqi security mission.

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