inside the glass house

Resolution on Iraq: But where is Iraq?
NEW YORK -- The 15-member Security Council adopted a near unanimous resolution last week lifting the 12-year-old UN sanctions against Iraq bringing the economically-devastated, war-ravaged country into the world community of nations. But the downside of the resolution was the bad precedent it created for the future of the world body: it legitimised the American-led invasion of Iraq and endorsed the foreign occupation of a UN member state.

The endorsement in itself was ironic because an overwhelming majority of the 191 member states had refused last March to authorise the same illegitimate war against Iraq which the Security Council has now virtually declared lawful.

France, Russia and Germany -- three countries which refused to provide the US with the UN authorisation it desperately needed for the war on Iraq -- eventually caved in and voted for the resolution.

The vote was 14:1, with Syria, the only Arab nation in the Security Council, refusing to participate in the voting. The 14 countries rubber-stamping the resolution were the US, Britain, France, Russia and China (all veto-wielding permanent members), along with nine other non-permanent members holding two-year rotating sets, namely Bulgaria, Cameroon, Guinea, Mexico, Angola, Chile, Germany, Pakistan and Spain.

The vote was also historic for other reasons: first, the raw political power wielded by the world's only superpower, which in the final analysis reigned supreme. Second, the vulnerability of developing nations to US threats and offers of economic aid and trade concessions.

And third, the willingness of big powers to safeguard their own national and commercial interests over issues such as violations of the UN charter, transgressions of international law, and military occupation of a sovereign state, and in the case of Iraq, a founder member of the United Nations.

Ironically, members of the US Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, have been more critical of the continued military occupation of Iraq, than some of the passive members of the UN Security Council.

At a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week, a former chairman of that committee, Democratic Senator Joe Biden, asked Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, one of the architects of the war, a very pertinent question.

"When is the President going to tell the American people that we're likely to be in the country of Iraq for three, four, five, six, eight, 10 years, with thousands of forces and spending billions of dollars?," Biden asked.

"They think Johnny and Jane are going to come marching home pretty soon," he added.
Senator Chuck Hagel, a member of the ruling Republican party, said: "We may have underestimated or miscalculated the challenges of establishing security and rebuilding Iraq".

The US, which has 145,000 US troops and Britain 20,000, is sending an additional 18,000 troops to Iraq next week reinforcing its military occupation even further.
The warning signs are obvious: the US is gradually getting bogged down in an Iraqi quagmire at a time when security is breaking down in the country, and more importantly, a promised civilian administration to be run by the Iraqis themselves, is being pushed back further to a distant horizon.

Just after the UN resolution was adopted last week, a coalition of over 150 peace groups and global non-governmental organisations (NGOs) lashed out at the Security Council for its political impotency. "The US was successful in bulldozing its way because it offered too many bribes and held out too many threats", complained Rob Wheeler, a spokesman for the Uniting for Peace Coalition.

"Iraq has the world's second largest oil reserves. The US will now decide how those reserves are to be distributed. And nobody wants to be cut out of the pie," he said.
Chile and Mexico, two developing nations in the Security Council with important trade relations with the US, were under heavy pressure to vote for the resolution. And so were other developing nations in the Council.

James Paul of the New York-based Global Policy Forum said that "many threats - and promises of a few oil fields - have brought the Council membership into line".
The American pressure was so intense, he said, that Chile's UN ambassador was recalled by his government "for failing to show sufficient support and enthusiasm for the US position".

The developing nations in the Security Council justified their support by focusing largely on the benefits that the removal of sanctions will offer to the long suffering Iraqis and for the country's reconstruction. Not surprisingly, the resolution spelling out the future of Iraq was adopted without the presence of a single Iraqi in the Council chamber -- a rare occurrence because a member state in question is usually offered the right to express its opinion.

With the ouster of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, his chief representative at the United Nations, Ambassador Mohammed Aldouri, packed his bags and left New York last month. As a result, Iraq has remained headless at the United Nations.

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