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To: mahler_one who wrote (8998)	3/26/2003 5:03:15 PM
From: Greg h2o	Respond to of 13797

Oil for Iraqis, Not the French (from wsj) In late February Germany's U.N. ambassador wrote back to Berlin that, after acting alone in Iraq, the United States would "remorsefully return" to the U.N. to seek help in rebuilding Iraq. A good place for the U.S. to start rebuffing this European conceit would be to throw over the side the U.N.'s corrupt oil-for-food program. U.N. Security Council members have been haggling this week over the fate of that program and the $40 billion said to be sitting in its escrow accounts. Some 60% of Iraqis reportedly depend on oil-for-food aid, which was suspended at the start of the war. And coalition forces announced yesterday that relief could soon begin flowing through the southern Iraqi port of Umm Qasr. But while Secretary-General Kofi Annan has proposed a resolution that would give him interim authority over the program and allow him to start the flow of humanitarian supplies, France and Russia have declared they will block anything acknowledging that the status quo has changed. Jacques Chirac says he will "not accept" any resolution that "would legitimize the military intervention" and "give the belligerents the powers to administer Iraq." As usual, the French and Russian position has more to do with commercial interests than any principled opposition to "legitimizing" the use of force. Oil-for-food has been a giant racket whereby Saddam has rewarded the firms of friendly countries with U.N.-approved contracts and kept most of the food for his Baathist allies. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Yuri Fedatov gave the game away Monday when he said that "Russian companies should not suffer any losses as a result of the illegal military operation against Iraq." In Paris, meanwhile, the French Foreign Ministry and the country's largest business federation had the gall to announce the formation of a working group to explore ways to wrest lucrative rebuilding jobs away from the Americans after the war. Both countries still talk openly about the importance of affirming the private oil deals they had with Saddam's regime. The Bush Administration is debating how to respond, and the State Department is assuring the White House that it can prevail in any new battle over oil-for-food at the U.N. State's argument is that no matter the French and Russian obstinacy about enforcing Resolution 1441, they will not want to be seen to be blocking crucial humanitarian aid. We'd say this rather overestimates French compassion, which we suppose is what they're paid to do at State. The better argument, it seems to us, is to accept this new French-Russian veto and proceed to cut out the U.N. middleman on oil-for-food and for that matter in overall efforts to rebuild Iraq. It is after all Iraq's oil money. And if the U.N. and the French were all that concerned with the fate of poor Iraqis they'd use the imminent departure of Saddam to start the flow of oil cash to start paying for food, water and other humanitarian relief. The U.N. doesn't need another oil-for-food resolution; all it needs is to recognize that the old one is null and void now that Saddam is headed for history. Having failed to help liberate Iraqis from Saddam, the U.N. shouldn't now be allowed to abuse Iraqis even more by playing games with oil-for-food so it can reassert its influence. Getting Iraq's oil money out of U.N. clutches, and into the hands of an interim Iraqi government, would also show the Arab world that regime change is not some kind of neo-colonial endeavor. It would also signal to the U.N. that after its Resolution 1441 fiasco it will not automatically be rehabilitated, as if no harm were done. The U.N. might be able to make a postwar contribution, but it will have to prove that it is up to the job. After the way he was betrayed by the French and Russians, we'd think that Colin Powell would have a special incentive to drive home that point. The U.S. can't help but benefit by making it clear that American anger at the U.N.'s Iraq abdication goes well beyond the Bush Administration's hawks. None other than Democratic Senator and Presidential candidate Joe Lieberman put it nicely at a fund-raiser this past weekend: "The U.N. truly lost its will in refusing to implement or enforce the resolution [1441] that it adopted . . . They can help us achieve what we want [in reconstruction] and share the costs, but I wouldn't feel obligated to bring them in."