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U.N. resolution
on Iraq passes
unanimously Sovereignty measure ends U.S. occupation June 30
The Associated Press Updated: 6:03 p.m. ET June 08, 2004
UNITED NATIONS - The U.N. Security Council gave a resounding 15-0 endorsement Tuesday to a U.S. resolution backing the transfer of sovereignty to Iraq’s new government 14 months after the fall of Saddam Hussein. President Bush predicted the measure would instill democracy and be a “catalyst for change” in the Middle East.
France and Germany dropped their objections after the resolution included a last-minute compromise giving Iraqi leaders control over the activities of their own troops and a say on “sensitive offensive operations” by the multinational force — such as the controversial siege of Fallujah. But the measure stops short of granting the Iraqis a veto over major U.S.-led military operations.
The resolution spells out the powers and the limitations of the new interim Iraqi government that will assume power on June 30. It authorizes the U.S.-led multinational force to remain in Iraq to help ensure security but gives the Iraqi government the right to ask the force to leave at any time.
Bush predicted victory
Bush claimed victory before the vote, telling reporters at the Group of Eight summit in Sea Island, Ga., that a unanimous approval would tell the world that the council nations “are interested in working together to make sure Iraq is free, peaceful and democratic.”
“These nations understand that a free Iraq will serve as a catalyst for change in the broader Middle East, which is an important part of winning the war on terror,” Bush said.
But his administration lowered expectations of gaining other countries’ military support — one of the original hopes behind the resolution. Four members of the Group of Eight summit — France, Germany, Russia and Canada — have said they won’t send troops to take the burden off the 138,000 American soldiers and the 24,000 troops from coalition partners.
Nevertheless, the adoption of the resolution will likely buy time for the new Iraqi government, boosting its international stature as it struggles to win acceptance and cope with a security crisis at home.
Iraqi foreign minister seeks ‘positive impact’ The interim government — put together by a U.N. envoy, the Americans and their Iraqi allies — hopes the vote will give it a legitimacy that eluded its predecessor, the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council. That legitimacy would put it in a better position to curry support among fellow Arab regimes and seek economic help from abroad.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, speaking in New York at the Council on Foreign Relations, predicted it would have a “positive impact” on security by removing the perception of the U.S.-led multinational force as an occupying power.
Although the resolution says the interim government will have authority to ask the force to leave, new Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi indicated in a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell that the force will remain at least until an elected transitional government takes power early next year.
French ideas included in final text French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said many French ideas were incorporated in the final text though Paris would have liked a clearer definition of the relationship between the new Iraqi government and the U.S.-led force.
“That doesn’t stop us from a positive vote in New York to help in a constructive way find a positive exit to this tragedy,” he told France-Inter radio.
Iraqi President Ghazi al-Yawer, meeting in Washington with Powell, brushed off any suggestion that there might be disagreement between U.S. and Iraqi commanders.
“We are working together,” al-Yawer told reporters. “These people are in our country to help us.” He added: “We have to think proactive. We cannot afford to be pessimistic.”
In Berlin, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said he hopes “that now there will finally be a stabilization of the security situation in Iraq.”
France and Germany had been among the sharpest critics in the Security Council of the U.S. decision to invade Iraq.
‘No way out by arms’ On Tuesday, Barnier said that during the weeks of negotiations on the resolution “there was a real dialogue for the first time in this affair.”
“The Americans clearly understood, after months and months of military operations, that there was no way out by arms, by military operations in Iraq,” the foreign minister said.
“Washington understood that we have to get out of this tragedy by the high road.”
Many other council members who had objections to the early U.S.-British drafts also announced their support for the final resolution — the fifth since May 24. They included China, which had proposed major changes, and Algeria, the council’s only Arab member, which argued for greater Iraqi control over its own military and major operations by the multinational force.
“I hope that all council members will stand united,” said China’s U.N. Ambassador Wang Guangya. “This resolution will send several political messages, number one that the military occupation will come to an end. Secondly it will say that the Iraqi people will be granted full sovereignty. So I hope that this is a very good beginning for the Iraqis.”
The main compromise was an addition to the resolution summarizing Iraq’s “security partnership” with U.S.-led forces, spelled out in an exchange of letters between Allawi and Powell.
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European Press Review: U.N. Resolution a Diplomatic VictoryEuropean editorial writers on Wednesday weighed in on the U.N. Security Council's unanimous approval of a new resolution meant to map out Iraq's political future.
America and Britain can be rightly pleased with the outcome of their diplomatic efforts at the United Nations, wrote the British daily, The Independent. It said that having failed last year to win the U.N. support they sought for invading Iraq, the allies have now got the world body’s blessing for their forces to remain there until January 2006. The paper said most Iraqis will be glad to shake off the stigma of occupation with the transfer of power at the end of this month, but added that diehard opponents of the allies will paint the shift as just a different form of American imperialism. In light of the continuing violence, the paper warned that despite one significant milestone, the allies will have to stay on maximum alert as they prepare for the next.
U.S. President George W Bush has scored a spectacular victory five months before the U.S. presidential elections, stated Sud-Ouest in France. The paper wrote that Bush managed to strike a compromise deal with the Iraq war-opponents, which proves that the diplomats under U.S. State Secretary Colin Powell won the day over Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his crew. On the other side, the paper said, Russia, France and especially Germany had to give up some of their demands so as not to worsen the already fragile state of Iraq. The paper acknowledged that the situation on the ground in Iraq remains unresolved and that no one should expect a miracle to happen with the transfer of power on June 30th.
Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung was more skeptical, saying that the new resolution has a weak spot. "It dodges the most controversial issue of who will have the final say on the use of troops?" the paper noted, "What will
happen when the US wants to win back a city from local militias and the Iraqi government is opposed?" the paper asked.
The Guardian in Britain was even more dismal. It said if there were a graveyard at the United Nations it would be filled with resolutions on Iraq. The latest one could be no different to its stillborn predecessors. The paper asserted that the new resolution is unlikely to make Iraq a safer place for foreign troops to operate, nor will it alter Iraqi perceptions about the nature of the occupation.
Vienna’s Der Standard said that there was a lot of international will behind the timely passing of the Iraq resolution, and that this was a sign that nations have finally realized that "pulling in different directions wasn't helping Iraq." But the paper commented that those who had firm views going into the negotiations won't be pleased with the result. Despite the talk of Iraqi sovereignty, the paper said that Iraq won't really have the say over what foreign troops do on its soil. The paper pointed out that while the resolution promises that the U.S. will consult Iraqis about military operations, at the same time, the U.S. has the right to take "all necessary steps" to fight Iraqi insurgents.
The Kurds are already talking about bailing out on the deal.
__________________
We live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was before he entered it.
I don't blame the Kurds a bit. They SHOULD be autonomous IMO. It only seems fair to me. Every group in the former Yugoslavia got their own country.
__________________
We live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was before he entered it.
I don't blame the Kurds a bit. They SHOULD be autonomous IMO. It only seems fair to me. Every group in the former Yugoslavia got their own country.
It'll be interesting to see what happens. I don't blame the kurds either...but I think there is alot more pressure trying to keep iraq together in that region.
The New Republic is running a rather inciting headline, but the rest of the article bears reading:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Iraq'd, by Spencer Ackerman, for The New Republic
PANIC ON THE STREETS OF KURDISTAN: The unanimity of the Security Council vote endorsing the Iraq transition plan is looking like a pyrrhic victory. It's not just the lack of foreign troops--they probably were never on their way. It's that the Kurds are talking about the new resolution as a historic betrayal. The Kurds adamantly wanted the text to endorse the Transitional Administrative Law, the interim constitution written by the Governing Council (with more than a little assistance from the CPA) that preserves Kurdish autonomy in northern Iraq, including the right to reject federal law, preserve the pesh merga as a security force and, most controversially, permit the Kurdish provinces to veto the permanent constitution. Their leaders, Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani, warned President Bush how seriously they consider the inclusion of that provision in the resolution, sending him a strongly worded letter last week that included the ominous line, "Our fate is too closely linked to your fortunes in Iraq."
The resolution doesn't recognize the TAL. Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani wrote the Security Council a rejoinder--helpfully translated by Juan Cole--demanding that the TAL not appear in the text, and it complied. While he doesn't specify what exactly he finds objectionable about the TAL (that is, beyond the not-insignificant fact that it was written in secret by an unelected council appointed by the occupation authority), in the past he has emphasized that its Article 61 provides the Kurdish minority with an unreasonable amount of veto power over a permanent constitution and warned that it would lead to Iraq's "partition and division." As best as I can tell, Sistani hasn't raised objections to the provisions in the TAL preserving Kurdistan as a unified, autonomous political entity--indeed, at the behest of Shia Council members, any three provinces of Iraq can vote to create a similar enclave--nor has he complained about the quasi-nullification or militia guarantees the TAL gives the Kurds.
The Kurdish leadership is now threatening to pull out of the central government. As The New York Times puts it, "That would amount to something like secession, which Kurdish officials have been hinting at privately for months but now appear to be actively considering." Secession is the Kurdish nuclear option, and it's not to be taken lightly. Not only would the Turks feel enormous pressure to send its hated military into Iraqi Kurdistan, Kurdish secession could spark a real civil war inside Iraq. The Kurds are surely not going to leave without the multiethnic and oil-drenched city of Kirkuk, which the Kurds call their Jerusalem--or, as Talabani ally Barham Salih wrote last year in The Wall Street Journal, their Gorazde. And, if there was any doubt that Gorazde's fate might become Kirkuk's, recall that after pesh merga forces fought alongside U.S. Marines in Falluja, residents of the insurgent's hotbed declared that they would seek revenge against the Kurds.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd, tried to put his best face on the U.N. defeat, saying "the spirit of the Transitional Administrative Law" is in the resolution. Of course, a cursory review of recent Kurdish history--alliance followed by betrayal followed by slaughter followed by resistance followed by genocide followed by rebirth and followed by renewed alliance--makes it clear why the Kurds need more than just "the spirit" of protections against central power. I've argued against the expansive Kurdish proposals on vetoing the constitution, and I continue to think that an acceptable compromise could be a national vote requiring a two-thirds majority for ratification. I should, however, have been more mindful of the devastation that has been Kurdish history, and I also should have paid more attention to the fact that the Shia haven't exactly been proposing alternative mechanisms to safeguard Kurdish rights.
The Kurds have unveiled their nuclear option, but they haven't pressed the detonator yet, which means there's still time for compromise. A senior official cautioned the Times "against reading the letter as a firm threat to abandon the central government," but that runs the risk of denying that this is a full-blown crisis. If you need convincing, look at Ahmed Karadaghi's article today on KurdishMedia.com for a Kurdish perspective. Karadaghi places what has happened at the U.N. in the context of the Kurds' long history of betrayals by outside powers:
[T]he hopes of many Kurds all over the world were fading as they knew that slowly but surely the process of betraying the Kurds had started all over again.
A process they had hoped to avoid at least once from their so called allies. But alas the students of Kissinger and the neo-conservatives in Washington have decided to swing away from the Kurds and play politics in tune with Shiite Cleric Grand Ayatollah Sistani, somewhat similar to how they switched sides 1978 in Iran, turning their back on the Shah and we all know how that turned out for the United states and Western countries.
Karadaghi is addressing the question of what the Kurds should do now, and some of his answers are alarming:
The ball is rolling in our future scenario, the next part would be an exhibition of Kurdish strength and determination, we have seen how the Kurds have been able to assemble 1.6 million signatures for a call to a referendum on the Kurdish right to self-determination. What the world hasn’t seen yet would be a display of the 60,000 strong, well trained and disciplined Peshmerga forces that Iyad Allawi the interim Iraqi prime minister so carelessly calls "Militias". Complete with a military parade down the main cities of Kurdistan with their leaders and thousands of Kurdish people cheering them on. This would be accompanied by all the heavy artillery and display of weapons the Kurds have been able to confiscate from the Iraqi army in the last 13 years. This would make headlines around the world even though the well engineered letter of Mr. Talabani and Mr. Barzani did not. But remember no more playing Mr. Nice Guy.
As a very wise observer pointed out to me as I inveighed against the Kurdish demands in the TAL and insisted on militia demobilization, from the Kurdish perspective, it's probably safe to assume you can't have both. The Kurds will either have legal protections or they will have military protections. (Already, you can kiss the recent "agreement" on militia demobilization goodbye.) With the future of Iraq at stake, Sistani and his allies are obliged to come up with some acceptable legal protections for the Kurds while compromise is still possible. Kurdish leaders have had praise for Sistani in the past, but they desperately need to see that they have a friend beyond the mountains.
The Bush Administration has a history of abandoning friends after they've gotten the P.R. that they wanted (just ask Ted Kennedy, Tony Blair, or Ahmad Chalabi). The Kurds have a history rife with betrayal. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. A civil war in Iraq before the election in Novemeber probably won't play very well.
European editorial writers on Wednesday weighed in on the U.N. Security Council's unanimous approval of a new resolution meant to map out Iraq's political future. 
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