New Iraq Resolution Voting Within This Week

The U.S. presented the first draft of resolution to reconstruct Iraq to the U.N. Security Council on October 14. The U.S. asked for a vote by this week, but the response of the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council was close to insufficient and will not be easy for the resolution to pass.

The presentation of this resolution of the U.S. and Britain is in its third revision and the U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, is trying to persuade other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council by saying, “This is the last one.”

The most noticeable parts of the new resolution are the clauses that Iraq’s interim government will plan to establish a constitution and hold a day for general election and that Iraq’s interim government can be accepted as an organization embodied with Iraqi sovereignty until the government approved in the international society is established.

The New York Times reported that an official of the U.S. administrative organ has made it clear that “it does not mean that instead of the U.S. troops, Iraq’s interim government is exercising sovereign power instead.” The New York Times has appraised that these clause were only changes of words rather than actual changes.

However these two clauses can be appraised to reflect of the U.S.’ pains about the French’s requirement to send Iraqi sovereignty to the Iraqi people and present the specific program. It is said that France does not care about the fact that the members of Iraq’s interim government were chosen by the U.S. as long as Iraq’s interim government can govern the country by it. But this resolution has also showed the limitation in the sense that the final supreme power of Iraq belongs to the occupying authorities under the leadership of the U.S.

German Foreign Minister Joshua Fischer appraised, “This is the first step towards the right direction,” and French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin has the reserved attitude saying, “We need to analyze the changed parts of the new resolution.”

The Russian Ambassador to U.N. Sergei Trepelkop and the Chinese Ambassador to U.N. said respectively, “It is difficult to reach an agreement without guarantee of U.N.’s leading role,” and “The contents of this resolution should lead to a step forward.”

The officials of the U.S. have positive opinions about passing this resolution because as long as Russia supports it, China and Germany will follow Russia’s decision even if France casts a blank ballot. However, U.N. Secretary, General Kofi Annan, dispersing the former resolution is a variable.

Ki-Tae Kwon kkt@donga.com