The United States called for a vote on Tuesday on a revised United Nations resolution defining the new Iraqi government’s powers. The measure appeared to have overwhelming support after a last-minute US compromise won the backing of the war’s sharpest critics, France and Germany.
US Ambassador John Negroponte said he was ”very optimistic” about the outcome of the vote scheduled for late Tuesday afternoon.
A last-minute addition to the resolution late on Monday by the US and Britain, summarising Iraq’s ”security partnership” with US-led forces, was the key compromise that paved the way for the vote.
Under the compromise, Iraqi leaders will have control of the country’s security forces, and Washington and Iraq’s new interim government have promised to work out a policy on how to cooperate on ”sensitive offensive operations”. But the deal stops short of
granting the Iraqis a veto over major offensives by US-led troops.
France, Germany and others have sought such a veto power for the Iraqis. Their pressure to give the Iraqi government due to take power on June 30 more authority prompted Washington and London repeatedly to alter their draft resolution.
Both countries said on Tuesday they will vote for the latest version. Chile and other Security Council members were still hoping for more changes, and China, while it welcomed the compromise, did not say how it will vote.
Still, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said he expected the measure would win unanimous backing.
”It should receive a very fair wind and good vote this afternoon in the Security Council,” Straw told BBC radio.
After weeks of negotiations, the US and Britain are hoping to send a united message to the Iraqi people that the international community supports the transfer of full sovereignty to the new interim Iraqi government and wants the new leaders to work in partnership with the US-led multinational force that is remaining in the country to help ensure security.
UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who helped put together the interim government, told the Security Council on Monday that the way the relationship between the interim government and the multinational force is managed ”will greatly affect the credibility of the interim government in the eyes of their people”.
French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said on Tuesday: ”We find many of our ideas in this text.”
Barnier said France would have liked a clearer definition of the relationship between the new Iraqi government and multinational force.
”That doesn’t stop us from a positive vote in New York to help in a constructive way find a positive exit to this tragedy,” he told France-Inter radio.
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer also promised his country’s vote.
”I hope that now there will finally be a stabilisation of the security situation in Iraq,” he said.
Spain, which said the earlier drafts did not go far enough, will support the latest version, Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said in Madrid.
Before Tuesday’s expected vote, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan scheduled a meeting of the Group of Friends of Iraq, comprising 47 nations and the European Commission.
Annan was expected to press for support for the new interim government at the forum, set up to exchange views and share advice with key interested parties — including Iraq’s neighbours.
French President Jacques Chirac, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and US President George Bush met over the weekend at celebrations in Normandy to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings.
The occasion was seen as a way to find reconciliation between the US and France, which led opposition to the war in Iraq.
France ”obtained lots of improvements” in the resolution, Barnier said.
”That proves that there was a real dialogue for the first time in this affair. The Americans clearly understood, after months and months of military operations, that there was no way out by arms, by military operations in Iraq,” the foreign minister said.
”Washington understood that we have to get out of this tragedy by the high road.”
France wanted the resolution to state clearly that Iraq’s interim government will have authority over its armed forces, that Iraqi forces can refuse to take part in operations by the multinational force, and that the new government could veto ”sensitive offensive operations” by the US-led force.
The draft sent to the 15-member Security Council earlier on Monday did not include any of these proposals. But the US and Britain revised the draft to welcome the exchange of letters between Iraq’s new prime minister and US Secretary of State Colin
Powell addressing the security relationship.
In those letters, the two sides pledge to work together to reach agreement on ”the full range of fundamental security and policy issues, including policy on sensitive offensive operations”.
The letters also note ”that Iraqi security forces are responsible to appropriate Iraqi ministers, that the government of Iraq has authority to commit Iraqi security forces to the multinational force to engage in operations with it”.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that ”there is every reason to believe that this work can produce a positive result”, according to Russia’s Interfax news agency.
China said on Tuesday it hoped the US and Britain will ”seek the widest consensus” on a final resolution.
”The new draft has many improvements. The Chinese side welcomes it,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Liu Jianchao said, without revealing which way Beijing will vote.
In an interview aired by BBC radio on Tuesday, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said that after the planned June 30 handover to an Iraqi administration, ”the ultimate political decision-making rests with the Iraqis”. — Sapa-AP