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Date Posted: 21:49:06 04/08/03 Tue
Iraq not your 'treasure chest', UN warns coalition
April 8 2003, 7:34 PM
United Nations chiefs warned America and Britain today that Iraq is not a "treasure chest to be divvied up" after the war.
UN under-secretary general Shashi Tharoor said the coalition allies had no rights under international law to engage in any kind of reconstruction or creation of government without the express consent of the Security Council.
Secretary General Kofi Annan is expected to meet British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other European leaders this week to hear what they will agree to on post-conflict Iraq.
Annan will be in "listening mode" but will not be advertising the UN's services for tackling Iraq, something which could eventually be a "poisoned chalice", his right-hand man said.
But referring to the US and Britain, Mr Tharoor said this should not be a case of "people dividing up the spoils of a conquest that they undertook".
Blair has reiterated his desire to see the UN play a role in post-war Iraq, but it is not clear how great he and US President George Bush want that to be.
Blair said Iraq should ultimately be run by the Iraqi people themselves. However, there is speculation that the US and Britain want to oversee administration in Baghdad in the initial phase after the war.
Tharoor told the BBC Radio 4 Today program: "The only thing that matters ultimately is the right of the Iraqi people to determine their own future, to control their own natural resources and to determine their own destinies.
"What the UN can do is to play a part in bringing that about. But that is the ultimate goal and certainly the UN has no desire whatsoever to see Iraq as some sort of treasure chest to be divvied up."
Under the Geneva Conventions, the allies have the rights and responsibilities of any occupying power, including the responsibility to look after the territory, law and order, security and the welfare of the people on that territory.
"But that's about it," Tharoor said.
"They really have no rights under the Geneva Conventions to transform the society or the polity or to exploit its economic resources or anything of that sort.
"If they need to do more they need to come to the Security Council to get the backing of international law for anything more ambitious than merely being an occupying power in the military sense.
"Let's not forget that Iraq is already subject to a number of Security Council resolutions that remain valid."
Sanctions on Iraq had to be actively lifted, Tharoor added.
"Anything the UN does would require a Security Council mandate, and that includes involvement in reconstruction, involvement in any aspects of governance or civil administration."
On his tour of Europe this week, Annan would like to "get a sense from his point of view as to what he can expect to find himself and his organisation saddled with at the end of a Security Council process that hasn't yet begun", Tharoor said.
If the US went ahead with an interim administration without Security Council backing, there would be "real difficulty in the extent to which other countries would be prepared to recognise this group as anything other than an offshoot or a branch of the military occupation in Iraq".
He added: "The UN is not the kind of private corporation that needs to increase its market share. We have quite enough to do elsewhere in the world and on other issues.
"We are certainly not seeking this assignment which in many cases, I think many aspects, of it would certainly be like drinking from a poisoned chalice."
Tony Baldry, Conservative chairman of the International Development Select Committee, told Today: "At the very least we (the committee) think it's essential that humanitarian organisations are seen as operating under the mandate of the United Nations rather than as reporting to one of the combatants."
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/08/1049567677580.html
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