Weeks of wrangling are in prospect at the United Nations about how the international organisation should respond to the deepening crisis in Iraq following the devastating car bomb at its headquarters in Baghdad.
The attack and the deaths and injuries of more United States and British troops in the last two days clearly indicate that the occupation force is unable to control growing resistance, along with its failure to provide elementary policing and local security or to restore and protect energy, water and electricity supplies.
Other states, and the UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, say they are not willing to help with peacekeeping and economic and political reconstruction in Iraq unless the US agrees to transfer authority to them through a new UN resolution. This cuts right across the policy line taken by the Bush administration before and during the war against Saddam Hussein's regime, which did not have specific Security Council approval. The problems it now faces with the occupation find other states sympathetic but unwilling to respond without a reciprocal political movement by Washington.
It all adds up to a real test of the reasons for going to war against Iraq in the first place. The Bush administration continues to insist it must control security and political reconstruction, while expecting others to help it out of its current difficulties.
By putting such continuing emphasis on terrorism - whether from remnants of the Saddam Hussein regime within Iraq or an influx of al-Qaeda and other forces from neighbouring states - Mr Bush and his representative in Iraq, Mr Paul Bremer, reassert their original policy and obscure growing Iraqi resentment of the occupation and the evident failures of reconstruction. These affect regional and world security and are not the concerns of the US and Britain alone.
It will take a determined effort by other members of the Security Council and by states such as India, Pakistan and Turkey which have been particularly canvassed by the US for more troops in Iraq to reach agreement on a new resolution which can provide the necessary mandate.
It will probably need further evidence of Iraqi resistance for the Bush administration to overcome its political objections. In both the US and Britain domestic political concern about the occupation and how it is being run is growing. That too will feed into the argument at the UN.
These difficulties will continue so long as Iraqis do not see a clear road towards restoring their self-government and political sovereignty, alongside the need for economic and political reconstruction of their country. That, after all, was the stated intention of the coalition which fought the war that toppled Saddam Hussein. These events show it will not be possible for the US to achieve them alone, without sharing power and responsibility with other states through the United Nations. The goodwill is there to tackle them, but only on the basis that the US makes a clear commitment to multilateral control.