The United States hopes to offer a new U.N. resolution on Iraq as soon as U.N. special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi concludes his work on naming the lead players in Iraq’s new government, the State Department said yesterday.
Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman also said U.S. forces would not need a Status of the Armed Forces Agreement (SOFA) to continue operating in Iraq after the June 30 handover.
Existing legislation already covers that, he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Questioned by senators as to exactly how the transition to Iraqi sovereignty will work, administration officials said they had turned to the United Nations and Iraq’s neighbors to help ensure a smooth handover.
“With lives being lost and billions of dollars being spent in Iraq, the American people must be assured that we have carefully thought through an Iraq policy that will optimize our prospects for success,” said committee Chairman Sen. Richard G. Lugar, Indiana Republican.
Mr. Brahimi has come to play a pivotal role between the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) and the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority in laying out the blueprint for the government, which is to prepare Iraq for general elections by early 2005.
“I think Mr. Brahimi’s effort has to be complete before there can be a Security Council resolution,” Mr. Grossman said. But, “we don’t want to be running around at midnight in New York on the 30th of June trying to get a Security Council resolution.”
A resolution could be placed before the U.N. Security Council in May, Mr. Grossman told the committee.
The undersecretary said the 25-person Iraqi Governing Council, under the leadership of senior member Adnan Pachachi, was working on an annex to the interim constitution that would incorporate Mr. Brahimi’s ideas for a transitional government.
The U.N. envoy has suggested a temporary administration led by a president, two vice presidents and a prime minister to shepherd the country to elections.
Unable to secure a SOFA with the current Iraqi council, Mr. Grossman said existing documents laying out how U.S. forces operate in Iraq obviated the need for such an agreement. These include the transitional administrative law passed by the IGC, U.N. Security Resolution 1511 and CPA order 17.
These documents, Mr. Grossman said, “will take us through the period ending this year.”
Mr. Grossman also told the panel that Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage last week had advised Iraq’s neighbors that it was important they support the transition and appeal to their Shi’ite and Sunni communities to do the same.
Peter Rodman, assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, said the United States already was talking with its allies about a multinational force to serve in Iraq after June 30.
But Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., Delaware Democrat, continued to press for details about who will be responsible for Iraq after the handover and what the Bush administration was doing to get NATO more deeply involved.
“Because you all know, but the public doesn’t know, and this little kabuki dance we’re having here, that’s how it gets done,” said Mr. Biden.
Although he acknowledged that the United States still did “not have all the answers” to a successful transition, Mr. Grossman said the State Department had laid out the “milestones” for the change of authority.
The post-handover U.S. mission in Baghdad — expected to be the largest American embassy in the world — will cost about $500 million this year and more than $1 billion in 2005, Mr. Grossman said.
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