SMH, President George Bush left the United States for Asia and Australia yesterday, with a United Nations Security Council resolution on Iraq in his pocket but no clear idea whether it would encourage other nations to make financial or military contributions to rebuilding the country.
There were few signs that the resolution would encourage other nations to do as it asks – “contribute assistance, including military forces, to a multinational force” and give money to help stabilise Iraq.
Mr Bush probably won't know the result until a donors conference in Madrid next week.
The resolution was unanimously approved by the Security Council just hours before Mr Bush left for Tokyo – the first of six stops on a six-day tour that culminates in Canberra.
It was passed after Russia, France and Germany, which opposed the war in Iraq, said they would vote for it, for the sake of council unity.
Syria, the only Arab nation on the Security Council, also voted in favour for the sake of unity.
These nations later said the resolution was not ideal, since it does require the US to yield power to the UN. None said they would offer troops, and nor will Pakistan, the one nation that the US was counting on, to make a military contribution.
In a joint statement after the vote, the UN ambassadors of France, Germany and Russia said the resolution did not create conditions “for us to envisage any military commitment and no further financial contributions beyond our present engagement”.
The European Union, which met yesterday in Brussels, also declined to increase the $336 million it has already offered.
The US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, warned the resolution should not be seen as “opening the door to troops.” The US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said: “In the event we do not get a sufficient number of forces, whatever number that is, we have a back-up plan.”
The US sees the passage of the UN resolution as a significant diplomatic victory at a time when its foreign policy is under attack throughout the world.
In basic terms, the resolution underscores the sovereignty of Iraq, and reaffirms the right of the Iraqi people “to freely determine their own political future, and to control their own natural resources”.
It says the coalition that currently governs Iraq (essentially the US and Britain) should relinquish power to Iraqis “as soon as practicable” and sets a December 15 deadline for the Governing Council to come up with plans for a new constitution and elections. The UN gets a slightly larger role, provided “circumstances permit”.
The US ambassador to the UN, John Negroponte, described the two months of debate about the resolution as “intense.”
At one point, there was talk of pulling the resolution out of the Security Council, rather than risk a diplomatic rupture like the one seen last March, when council members indicated they would not support a resolution authorising war against Iraq.
But, Mr Negroponte said, the US wanted to give other nations a chance to help in Iraq, because “if ever there was a time to help Iraq, it is now”. Diplomats said the tide turned toward the US when China decided to vote for the resolution.
