Focus Shifts to the Un; Peace Is the First Priority for the World's Policeman
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Summary
EVEN by the now almost routine incidence of atrocities in Iraq, the suicide car bombing which yesterday killed at least 20 people outside the US headquarters in Baghdad is significant. The deadliest attack since the capture of Saddam last month took place at the edge of the most heavily fortified compound in the capital, yet was still able to wreak carnage. The message from the attackers, that there is no protection zone large enough to guard against a terrorist carrying enough explosive, was clear. But the real shockwaves were perhaps intended to be felt thousands of miles away in New York, where the US administrator of Iraq, Paul Bremer, is due today to ask the UN to expand its role in the country.
The meeting between Mr Bremer and Kofi Annan, the secretary general, comes less than six months since 23 UN staff were murdered in an attack on the organisation's Baghdad headquarters, and a year after the UN was shunned in the rush to invade. The morass in Iraq is not of the UN's making. That, however, is history. What the UN must concern itself with now are the prospects for a peaceful transfer of power to Iraqis. The US has set itself an ambitious timetable to have the Transitional National Assembly assume control by the end of June. That schedule is now in trouble, which is why the UN, having been made redundant by the US and Britain from its job as the world's policeman, suddenly finds itself asked to climb into uniform again.See the full content of this document
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Focus Shifts to the Un; Peace Is the First Priority for the World's Policeman
The US plan calls for assembly members to be chosen by regional caucuses, but the Ayatollah Ali Sistani...
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