Meanwhile, back at the UN---here we go again, folks! DOD has won the war with state, I guess. Lets see if State undercuts them at the UN.
washingtonpost.com
U.S. to Offer Resolution to End Sanctions
By Karen DeYoung and Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, April 25, 2003; Page A01
The Bush administration plans to introduce next week a U.N. Security Council resolution that would lift more than a decade of international sanctions on Iraq, while limiting U.N. involvement in Iraq's foreseeable future to a consultative role, senior administration officials said yesterday.
The resolution would direct U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to name a special representative who can work with U.S. officials in Baghdad on humanitarian and reconstruction programs, and on the formation of an Iraqi Interim Authority, officials said. But it would firmly endorse control by the United States and its military allies over international involvement in Iraq until a permanent, representative government is in place.
President Bush said last week that the United Nations should lift the sanctions "now that Iraq is liberated," but the Defense and State departments were divided over how to accomplish it. The resolution decision, made at a meeting of top Bush national security advisers on Wednesday, essentially adopted the Pentagon's proposal for a broad elimination of all U.N. control over Iraq, rather than the State Department's preferred step-by-step approach.
In his Belfast summit early this month with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush pledged a "vital" U.N. role in Iraq. The decision to offer only modest concessions to countries that have argued that the United Nations must have a defining part in the reconstruction effort could spark a new confrontation at a time when many council members are trying to repair their relations with the United States.
But the administration is banking on a lack of council desire to again challenge U.S. power after the wrenching war debates early last month, on a recognition of the established new facts on the ground, and on a reluctance to obstruct urgently needed assistance to get Iraq back on its feet.
REST AT:http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35172-2003Apr24?language=printer |
