Agence France Presse

WASHINGTON, 4 February 2004 — UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said after meeting US President George W. Bush yesterday that he was sending a team to Iraq to “break the impasse” over the US-backed plan for transferring power there.

“I have decided to send a team, a team that will go in to work with the Iraqis in finding the way forward. Everyone agrees that sovereignty should be handed over as soon as possible,” Annan said in the White House Oval Office.

The UN chief did not say when the team would go to Iraq, where the United States fears for its plans to transfer power to a provisional government named by a transitional assembly without holding national elections.

That blueprint has drawn mounting opposition from the majority Shiite Muslim community in Iraq.

Emphasizing the fence-mending nature of Annan’s visit, Bush paid tribute to the world body he once derided as a “debating society” for denying its explicit backing to the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

“The world is changing for the better, and the United Nations is playing a vital role in that change,” he said, stressing that he and Annan had discussed Iraq,

Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, the Middle East, and Africa.

“I believe that the stability of Iraq is in everyone’s interest,” said Annan, who cited “some disagreement” over how to establish a provisional government and said his team would seek to overcome that hurdle.

The group will seek to convince Iraqis “that if they could come to some consensus and some agreement on how to establish that government, they’re halfway there,” he said during their brief joint public appearance.

“The team will talk to as many Iraqis as possible and help them steer things in the right direction,” said Annan. “We do have a chance to help break the impasse which exists at the moment and move forward.”