George Bush moved to reassure Tony Blair and sceptical world opinion yesterday that the United States would guarantee a ”vital role” for the United Nations in postwar Iraq and that he would commit his own prestige to promoting the Middle East peace process.
In an upbeat assessment of the three-week war during a break from their 20-hour summit at Hillsborough Castle, outside Belfast, the two leaders promised that their ”war of liberation, not of conquest” would restore Iraqi self-government as soon as possible.
But within hours of the joint press conference, France’s president, Jacques Chirac, castigated notions of non-UN involvement, and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, announced a summit in St Petersburg on Friday involving Chirac and the German leader, Gerhard Schröder.
The three will be joined by the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, a day later, indicating serious attempts to stage a viable alternative to the US-UK thrust for a post-Saddam Iraq.
Chirac said pointedly: ”The reconstruction of Iraq is a matter for the United Nations and it alone. We are no longer in an era where one or two countries can control the fate of another country.”
The US president did not confine himself to Iraqi reconstruction. He also pledged to ”spend the same amount of energy on the Middle East” as Blair had spent on bringing peace to Northern Ireland. US observers travelling with the president were astonished by such a pledge. ”Today was a Blair ballet. This sitting down to resolve issues isn’t Bush-ism, it was Blairism,” said one.
Though Bush is the first US president to endorse a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine, such talk is unlikely to impress implacable critics of the US-led coalition while the bloodshed continues in Iraq and the fate of Saddam Hussein remains, as Bush cautiously admitted, unclear.
”Saddam will be gone. It might have been yesterday, I don’t know. But he’ll be gone,” Bush predicted. He added: ”I don’t know whether he survived. The only thing I know is that he is losing power.”
Though both sides know enormous risks remain, the overall tone of the official communique represented a success for Blair in his efforts to persuade wary British voters and MPs — and EU allies — that the hawks in the Bush team do not always speak for their president.
In two notable asides for TV audiences around the world Bush demonstrated what he called ”the grip Saddam had around the throat of the Iraqi people. I cannot tell you if all 10 fingers are off the throat, but, finger by finger, they are coming off”.
He said later: ”Apparently there’s some scepticism here in Europe about whether I mean what I say. Saddam Hussein knows I mean what I say, and the people of Iraq know I mean what I say when we promise to give them freedom.”
The two leaders made at least six references to a promised ”vital role” for the UN, although the precise meaning of that remains a matter for negotiation. But at one point the president said: ”That means food, that means medicines, that means aid, that means suggesting people for the Interim Iraqi Authority.”
Blair aides suggested that all sides would be free to suggest names for the interim authority to avoid charges that it was a puppet regime until, as Bush put it, ”the real [elected] government shows up”.
Both men repeatedly rejected any suggestion that Iraqis could not govern themselves or were indifferent to democratic institutions. ”It is a cynical world that says it is impossible for Iraqis to run themselves,” Bush chided.
But Blair, who is eager to bind up the past month’s wounds, spoke of the need to avoid ”endless diplomatic wrangling”. He said: ”The important thing is not to get into some battle about words on the precise role here or there.
”Let’s all work together internationally — the coalition forces, the international community — to do what we really should be doing, which is make sure that the will of the Iraqi people is properly expressed in institutions that in the end they own, not any outside power or authority.” – Guardian Unlimited Â