U.S. Faces Uphill Struggle at U.N. for More Troops
Fri August 22, 2003 03:38 AM ET
By Evelyn Leopold
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Despite worldwide anguish over the bombing of the U.N. compound in Baghdad, the United States faces considerable resistance in its quest to recruit more troops, police and money to help rebuild Iraq.
France, Germany and Russia, all former opponents of the war, made clear on Thursday that the crisis did not change their positions on wanting a larger United Nations role in molding Iraq's future.
But Secretary of State Colin Powell gave no indication the Bush administration would relinquish military or other controls of the country's development.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who confers with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Friday on a Security Council resolution aimed at encouraging nations to help in Iraq, echoed Powell on the need for a unified military command under control of the United States, which has 150,000 troops in Iraq.
But he also said potential troop contributors would be asked their views on language that would meet political needs.
Powell, after conferring with Annan, stressed that the U.S.-led force in Iraq was already multinational, with 30 nations providing about 22,000 troops and more expected.
But 11,000 of these troops are from Britain alone. Countries such as India, Pakistan and Turkey are reluctant to send troops without another U.N. mandate and some have doubts about serving under a U.S. command.
"Ceding authority is not an issue we have had to discuss," Powell told reporters. But he said that "perhaps additional language and a new resolution might encourage others."
Michel Duclos, the deputy French ambassador, took the lead in criticizing the Bush administration, saying it had not even fulfilled its promise for an international board of advisors for a fund that would decide how to spend Iraqi oil monies.
'SHARE THE BURDEN'
"To share the burden and the responsibilities in a world of equal and sovereign nations, also means sharing information and authority," Duclos said.
At least 24 people perished on Tuesday when a truck bomb demolished U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, killing 23 staff members and injuring nearly 100 more. Brazilian Sergio Vieira de Mello, head of the mission, perished in his office.
Annan himself again turned down any suggestion of organizing a blue-helmeted peacekeeping force. But he said he could visualize a multinational force "that oversees the security arrangements with the United Nations."
Richard Holbrooke, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the Clinton administration, gave his own interpretation of Annan's comments in television interviews.
"What Colin Powell did was come to New York and offer the same resolution essentially that we'd offered two weeks ago and portray it as a tribute to the fallen and great and brave Sergio Vieira de Mello and the other U.N. people," he said.
Calling troop contributions "piddling" except for Britain, Holbrooke told CNN that a NATO country like Norway should form a multinational force "with the sole mission of protecting the U.N." within an overall American umbrella.
Meanwhile, grieving over the disaster cascaded through U.N. headquarters in New York and Geneva. "The ache in our souls is almost too much too bear," Annan said in a message to Baghdad staff and employees around the world.
His chief spokesman, Fred Eckhard, was too upset to deliver a tribute to Younes, a former spokeswoman, and gave it to his deputy, Marie Okabe, to read.
The tribute recalled that Nadia Younes, recently at the World Health Organization, had a hand in inventing the name Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome after doctors at WHO wanted to call it Acute Respiratory Syndrome.
"It's redundant," she was quoted as saying, " but we couldn't call it ARS(e)."
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