Friday, Mar 28, 2003
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By Sridhar Krishnaswami
The U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, testifies before a House subcommitte in Washington on Wednesday.
"We didn't take on this huge burden with our coalition partners not to be able to have a significant dominating control over how it unfolds in the future," Gen. Powell told a Sub-Committee of the House of Representatives. "We would not support...essentially handing over to the U.N. or someone designated by the U.N. to suddenly become in-charge of this whole operation," Gen. Powell said. "We have picked on a greater obligation: to make sure there is a functioning Iraqi Government that is supported by the coalition, the centre of gravity remaining with the coalition, military and civilian," Gen. Powell told law-makers on Wednesday. The Bush administration has all along been saying that the United Nations should be involved in managing the humanitarian state of affairs in Iraq; and has not even dealt with the other emerging political and economic issues in a very open manner when the hostilities are going on. Gen. Powell maintained that the world body should have a role in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq because it makes it easier for other countries to contribute to reconstruction efforts. But a sense of unease has come about at the United Nations where major powers like France, Russia and China, who were against the U.S.-led operations against Iraq, now see the Bush administration trying indirectly to have the Security Council legitimise an invasion retroactively. Further, many are worried that Washington is eyeing the Iraqi oil money now in a United Nations escrow account to pay for humanitarian efforts. The dominant thinking in New York is that since the U. S. and its `coalition' started the war, they should be involved in the humanitarian clean up, not the United Nations. The Secretary of State's rather blunt observations on the role for others in a political post war Iraq is bound to cause a few jitters, especially from those who have invested heavily in oil and related projects during the Saddam Hussein era and could not extract a dime on account of the persisting sanctions. In fact, when Russia, France and China were adamantly opposing the U.S.' objectives in Iraq, the thinking in New York was that these countries had heavily invested in Iraq and were opposed to regime change because of worries of the new regime not honouring the contracts. In the midst heavy pounding of Baghdad by coalition jets and in the hope within the Bush administration that the days of the Saddam Hussein's regime are numbered, there is the rising clamour in the international community that the new regime should honour existing contracts as that would only be the legal thing to do under international law. The growing concern is not only on the existing contracts with the Saddam Hussein regime running literally into the billions of dollars, but in a post-war economic reconstruction which the U. S., Britain and other allies might try to corner for the multinationals from their countries. And the small beginnings have indeed been made along these lines.
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