(4 of 6)
It was not until the bombing of U.N. headquarters in Baghdad on Aug. 19 that an interagency group in Washington began working on a draft resolution. On Sept. 2, Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell met with Bush to discuss the broad outlines of a proposal that would reinforce an international pledge to Iraq's security and encourage other nations to commit funds to the country's reconstruction. (A donors' conference to rustle up money for Iraq has already been scheduled for Madrid in October.) Powell told Bush that under the terms of the draft resolution, the U.S. would continue to run the military operation in Iraq. "This works," said the President as the meeting ended.
It may--but there's hard pounding to be done before that's certain. Detailed talks started on Saturday, when Powell met in Geneva with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the Foreign Ministers of China, Britain, Russia and France--the other permanent members of the Security Council--to discuss a new U.N. mandate for Iraq. At the end of the day's talks, which will be continued this week, Annan said that a consensus was "essential and achievable." But it won't be found on the terms that the U.S. first presented. "With the current resolution," says a senior European diplomat, "you wouldn't get a single new troop contributor or a single new donor to the conference."
The crucial issue is not U.S. command of military forces in Iraq, for no other country is foolish enough to want that burden, but the nature of political control over the reconstruction effort. France, Russia, China and Germany--which is a member of the Security Council but not a permanent one--want a three-stage political timetable. Authority in Iraq would devolve from the Coalition Provisional Authority, headed by U.S. envoy Paul (Jerry) Bremer, to the U.N. and then to the Iraqis themselves. But that would mean the U.S. ditching Bremer, and there's no public sign that the Administration is prepared to do that. "If the French try to argue about taking things away from Jerry Bremer," says a senior State Department official, "that ain't gonna happen."
Though officials like French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin are, as usual, infuriating the Anglo-Saxons with their abstract nouns and high concepts (according to a knowledgeable source, Powell has told Paris, "Stop showing me poetry, and give me your plan"), the French are actually behaving with sweet reason. "The reconstruction of Iraq is a shared duty," De Villepin wrote in Le Monde last week, using Bush's very own formulation. Paris acts as if it is laboring under a decree from President Jacques Chirac that no official must ever, ever be caught saying, "I told you so" to the Americans, no matter how tempting it may be to do so. So there might be room for compromise. One idea likely to be floated: that Bremer remain in place but report both to Washington and to the Security Council. After a while, says a European diplomat, Bremer would be replaced by "an Arab-looking or -sounding gentleman at the helm of this international mission." The Europeans see power then being handed over from the U.N. to the Iraqis themselves in not much more than a few months--an ambitious target and one that Powell plainly thinks is unrealistic.
SHOW ME THE MONEY