IRAQ: Now that the US administration is moving towards giving the United Nations more influence in Iraq, the UN's senior adviser in Baghdad has called for responsibility to be shifted to Iraqis, not other foreigners.
What Iraq really needs, Mr Ghassan Salame told the Arab Press Club yesterday in Paris, is a timetable for the departure of occupation forces and a rapid transition to an elected government and permanent institutions.
"Everyone knows the situation in Iraq is far from satisfactory," said Mr Salame, a former Lebanese cabinet minister and politics professor.
"I was particularly happy to hear Mr Rumsfeld [the US Secretary of Defence] at last acknowledge this.
"The situation is untenable. Reinforcing or increasing the number of troops in Iraq - under whatever flag - is not a solution."
The international community "must have the courage to put the Iraqis out front and transform the other parties - the coalition, the UN and Non-Governmental Organisations - into a supporting role in a peace and reconstruction effort that would be principally the responsibility of the Iraqis," Mr Salame said.
Unless transitional Iraqi insititutions were strengthened and there was a clear timetable for moving to permanent structures, Mr Salame predicted, "there will be a natural, foreseeable slide towards radicalisation . . .
"Announcing a timetable would reassure Iraqis that the occupation is not open-ended, and that new conditions will not be added for ending it."
One of the greatest problems in Iraq, he added, was that "there is no light at the end of the tunnel if you don't set deadlines".
Iraqis "sometimes have the impression that the only calendar that matters is the US elections. Iraqis don't deserve this; they have the right to their own timetable," Mr Salame said.
A provisional government could be established now, combining the US-appointed governing council and the 25 ministers it named last week.
This Iraqi government could, he claimed, convene a constitutional conference next month, hold a referendum on the constitution early next year, and general elections by April or May 2004.
Mr Salame survived the suicide bombing that killed 23 people in the UN's Baghdad headquarters on August 19th. For 40 minutes, he talked with his boss, Mr Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN special envoy to Iraqi, who was trapped in the wreckage.
"I could see him. He said only a few words. I was trying to tell him to be courageous and patient. But he had two floors on his knees and it took some time and he bled to death . . ." he said.
In the three months they worked together, Mr Salame said, he and Mr de Mello maintained "a sometimes intense dialogue" with the US civil administrator, Mr Paul Bremer.
The UN representatives persuaded Mr Bremer to transform the consultative council into a body with some executive prerogatives. The UN also pushed for the creation of a constitutional commission and the naming of ministers.
"These are the results of our policy of progessively wearing down the tight grip given to the occupation forces under 1483," Mr Salame said.
If anything positive could come out of "the abominable attack" on the UN offices, he said, it would be a clear mandate for the UN in Iraq. Articles 8 and 9 of resolution 1483 left the UN's role "extremely vague . . . something several of my dead colleagues, including Sergio de Mello, complained of constantly".
Although all 15 members of the UN Security Council now say they want a greater role for the UN, theirs is an "artificial unanimity", Mr Salame said. A draft resolution presented by the US is no more specific about the UN's political role than 1483 was.
Security Council members must put the debate about the war's causes and conduct behind them, he said.
"Iraq as it is today is a threat to regional stability and international security and a threat to its own citizens as well," he explained. "Real unanimity is needed to send a clear message to Iraqis, to show them that whatever forces - be they coalition, occupation, multinational, blue berets - are really representative of a reunified international community that has turned the page of pre-war divisions."
Alluding to neo-conservative strategists in the US administration, Mr Salame said Iraqis disliked hearing that the invasion of their country was a means of reshaping the Middle East.
"It's very unpleasant for Iraqis to think [the Americans] have come not to resolve the problems of Iraq, but to use it as an example or case study for the rest of the region," he said.
"Now they are talking about the war on terror, when it is not established that Iraq had anything to do with the September 11th attacks. But the fight against terrorism is supposed to justify the continuation of the occupation."
Reshaping the Middle East and fighting terrorism were "huge undertakings, perhaps justified", Mr Salame said. "But I fear that Iraq has become a hostage to these plans. Twenty-six million Iraqis are getting lost in the global vision."