Postwar Iraq points to more diplomatic stress

5.45pm

LONDON - Anglo-American pledges that the United Nations will play a "vital role" in postwar Iraq may not be enough to ward off a fresh diplomatic showdown with the big powers of Europe.

Apparently unappeased by President George W Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair's war and peace summit in Northern Ireland, Europe's anti-war leaders France, Germany and Russia are holding a rival meeting in St Petersburg at the weekend.

If, as expected, they press for a bigger UN role in Iraq than either Washington or London envisage, that could set the scene for a postwar fight at the UN Security Council to rival the traumatic pre-conflict dispute over authorising force.

"The jostling has begun," Jeffrey Gedmin, director of the Aspen Institute in Berlin, said of the rival meetings.

"We have developed a cycle that is now hard to break... We have a different alignment of forces and a lack of trust. Will it develop into a full-blown round two or will it be a hiccup after the first fight? It's too early to say."

The United States and Britain desperately want to avoid opening a new diplomatic battlefront.

Blair, who failed spectacularly to bridge the prewar trans-Atlantic differences, has pleaded daily for unity.

In his latest bid to mend diplomatic fences damaged by the war in the Gulf, he telephoned French and Russian Presidents Jacques Chirac and Vladimir Putin on Wednesday to update them on his talks with Bush.

"The prime minister underlined the vital role for the UN in this process," Blair's spokesman said of the conversation with Chirac. "Both agreed on the need for Iraq to be governed by the Iraqi people as soon as possible.

"They also agreed that the international community needed to work together to help achieve this."

Bush made similar comments at Tuesday's summit with Blair in Northern Ireland, but sceptics believe the US leader cares far less than Blair about UN credibility.

It is that widespread fear the United States will in fact do whatever it wants in Iraq -- with the thinnest of UN fig-leaves for endorsement -- that underpins the postwar debate.

Washington and London envisage three stages after war: military occupation in the immediate aftermath, an interim government mixing US and British officials with Iraqi locals and exiles, then a new, elected Iraqi government.

The United Nations does not want control but the Franco-German-Russian axis would like to see it play a bigger role.

"We are no longer in an era where one or two countries can control the fate of another country," according to French President Jacques Chirac, loudest of the war critics.

Many also fear the second stage of an interim government will in fact be dominated by US officials and US-groomed Iraqi exiles, giving Washington undue influence.

And there were notable omissions in the Bush-Blair vision at Belfast. Pressed to elaborate on what the "vital" UN role will be, Bush volunteered aid and "suggestions" for interim rule.

A reduced role may, ironically, suit the UN bureaucracy, analysts say.

The United Nations does not want a lead role in light of the "horrific lawlessness" and enormity of reconstruction, said Iraq expert Toby Dodge, of Britain's Warwick University. "If anything, they are petrified they will have such a role foisted on them."

The greatest lever open to anti-war Security Council members is the cash held for Iraqi reconstruction under the UN oil-for-food programme.

The anti-war bloc could play for the best deal and biggest UN role possible, or turn confrontational and block any UN legitimising of the Anglo-American plans, analysts said.

"France, Germany and Russia want to show at the St Petersburg meeting that their alliance was not a one-off thing, that their opinion is to be reckoned with," said Yevgeny Volk, an analyst at Russia's Heritage Foundation.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq war