Iraq, June 30 and the Debate on Sovereignty

 

Friday  June 4, 2004

Amir Taheri, Arab News

As the debate over a new United Nations’ resolution on Iraq gathers momentum one word we are sure to hear often is: Sovereignty.

In its strictly legal sense sovereignty means supreme and independent political authority. And this is what both the US-led coalition and the UN promise to transfer to the Iraqis by the end of June.

As a member of the United Nations, however, Iraq never ceased to be a sovereign state. In fact, respect for Iraq’s sovereignty is the bedrock of all the 20 resolutions that the Security Council ahs passed about that country since 1990.

What matters, therefore, is the exercise of that sovereignty. And it is precisely here that some members of the Security Council are trying to impose severe limits on the newly formed transitional government in Baghdad.

“ The people of Iraq must be allowed to decide for themselves,” France’s President Jacques Chirac said in a speech in Mexico last week. Just a day, later, however, his Elysee Palace was complaining that Dr. Iyad Allawi, the man chosen as Iraq’s interim prime minister, was “too close to the Americans.”

“Someone not so close to the coalition would have been better,” an Elysee source asserted.

Well, we all know someone who might qualify. His name is Saddam Hussein and he is in jail somewhere in Baghdad. All other Iraqi politicians of note, including the President-elect Ghazi Al-Yawar, are close to the coalition and welcomed the war.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov has his own definition of sovereignty.

He says the new Iraqi government must have “full sovereignty” but should not be allowed to decide the terms under which the multinational force would stay in Iraq. That decision, he says, should be left to the Security Council.

France and Russia are not alone in speaking with a forked tongue on the issue of Iraqi sovereignty. The Bush administration, too, is sending conflicting signals.

It started by suggesting “limited sovereignty”, which sounds like “limited pregnancy”. Later, it dropped the adjective “limited” but still continued to insist that certain key decisions be reserved for an as yet unknown mechanism in which Washington will have the final word.

Part of the confusion is due to Washington’s insistence, prompted by London, to seek a new UN resolution. British Prime Minister Tony Blair may need this for reasons of domestic politics. The Bush administration might also need a resolution to puncture the Democrats’ charge of unilateralism.

As far as Iraq is concerned, however, it is hard to see the need for yet another resolution.

Russia, China and France are unlikely to contribute troops and/or money to make Iraq work because that would prove George W. Bush right in saying that Iraq can be transformed into a better state. As far as men and money are concerned, Iraq is going to be the US-led coalition’s baby for sometime yet.

The truth is that no one in Iraq wants the United Nations. In turn, the UN dos not really want a role in Iraq. Lakhdar Brahimi, the Algerian diplomat chosen by the UN to head its Iraq mission, must have known that from the start. And yet he allowed the fiction to spread that he, and not Iraqi political leaders, would pick the new transition government. He also came up with the bizarre idea that what Iraq needed was a government of “technocrats” as if the problem was fixing a car engine, not building a new democratic state.

For almost 50 years normal politics did not exist in Iraq. All governments formed by successive despots consisted of technocrats, some of them experts in gassing people to death.

What Iraq needs is politics, that is to say popular participation in decision-making. And the best way to move in that direction is certainly not by letting Brahimi pick a government of technocrats for Iraq or let the Security Council impose an ersatz mandate on that country.

Having needlessly brought in the UN, Washington and London have a moral duty to prevent the passage of a resolution that would render Iraqi sovereignty meaningless.

There are four key issues here:

• The Security Council should not get a veto on the shape, size and content of the new Iraqi government. Whether anyone likes it or not the Iraq Governing Council is at present that nation’s highest political authority. It also enjoys moral authority because it is supported by most sections of civil society represented by all political parties, except the Baath, plus the clergy, tribal chiefs, trades unions, cultural and professional associations

• The shape, size and length of mandate of any would-be multinational peacekeeping force should be decided by contributing nations with the consent of the Iraqi interim government. There is no reason why Russia, China and France who will not be involved in the force in any way should have a veto on its composition, modes of operation and length of mission.

• Washington should not try to force the interim government to endorse decisions that fall beyond its remit. The interim government cannot commit Iraq to long-term treaties, pacts, and commercial contracts. All such matters should be decided by the freely elected government to be formed next year.

• The interim government cannot decide Iraq’s permanent constitution. That task must be reserved for a freely elected constituent assembly.

The interim government has one central task: Holding free and fair elections, under UN and other international supervision, as quickly as possible. The notional date now is January 2005. But there is no reason why an earlier date could not be chosen. The UN has a crucial role to play in guaranteeing the freedom and fairness of the planned elections.

Thus the proposed Security Council resolution should focus on the election issue. It should set out the rules under which the UN would work with the interim government to organize the elections. The US-led coalition, meanwhile, should receive a new mandate: Ensuring Iraq’s safety from foreign aggression and helping it establish domestic security needed for holding elections.

Russia, China and France are trying to impose a limit on the length of the multinational peacekeeping force. The Russians have even mentioned six months as “the maximum acceptable”.

That would send a signal to the Saddamites and their terrorist allies that all they need to do is to keep up the pressure for six months, which means disrupting the planned elections.

The idea that the presence of the multinational force be reviewed by the Security Council every six months would not only de-stabilize the interim government but would also inject an added element of uncertainty into Iraq’s as yet tentative process of normalization.

President Bush has said that the US is prepared to stay in Iraq for as long as it takes to create a stable, people-based government in Baghdad. That clear message must not be diluted by diplomatic doubletalk from the UN.

Iraq has a new interim government whose main task is to enable the people to choose the political system they want and the personnel they wish to run it. The whole world should help the people of Iraq achieve that goal. This is no time with using Iraq as a pretext for settling other scores or playing diplomatic games.

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