WASHINGTON, June 2 (UPI) -- Lahkdar Brahimi, the U.N. special envoy in Iraq, will have some explaining to do when he appears before the Security Council, possibly as early Friday. As he left for Baghdad charged with forming an interim government to take over on June 30 he said he planned to recruit technocrats unconnected with the Iraqi Governing Council.
What has emerged after "frantic, grueling days of politicking in Baghdad" -- as a European diplomat in New York put it Wednesday -- is a government in which the IGC has risen like the phoenix from the ashes of its own disbanding.
The new Iraqi president is Sheik Ghazi al-Yawer, current head of the IGC, a Sunni businessman and prominent tribal leader. The two deputy presidents are Ibrahim Saafari, a Shiite, and Ronset Shaways, a Kurd. The prime minister, announced earlier, is Ayad Allawi, also a secular Shiite.
President Bush Tuesday said Washington had had little to do with the final selection of an interim government. "Brahimi was the person who put together the group," Bush said. Diplomats in New York and Washington said this did not seem to be entirely the case. In some of the key appointments in the past few days Brahimi seemed to be lagging behind the action.
The first news of Sheikh al-Yawer's appointment came from the Iraqi National Council, as had Allawi's nomination earlier. In the latter case Brahimi then made the formal announcement, saying the United Nations welcomed the nomination.
In the former case, Brahimi's office in Baghdad first said that the U.N. representative "respected" the choice, and only later did he claim responsibility for it. In New York, Secretary General Kofi Annan admitted to journalists that "the process wasn't perfect." But "given the circumstances and the factors on the ground, it was not surprising that you have a mix of people from the Governing Council and from outside to form a government," Annan went on.
Some Security Council members still wanted to hear about the wide gap between the strategy going in and the final result. "What Brahimi has done is not coherent with what he said he would do," said one diplomat at the United Nations. But others feel what matters is the end result, namely a government for Iraq.
"It is not for the Security Council to judge whether this is a good government or not a good government," argued another U.N. diplomatic source. "What matters is, can it keep order, is it going to control the whole country and not just the Baghdad enclave, can it prepare for elections in January, can it advance democracy in Iraq?"
Whatever the outcome, Brahimi's mission may still have been based on the wrong assumption that at a given signal from him or from the U.S. administration in Iraq the IGC would lie down and play dead. Instead, as the diplomat put it, "the IGC decided that it was going to stay in power."
Having secured the top jobs in the interim government that is supposed to prepare the ground for new elections in January, the IGC then dissolved itself, thus fulfilling expectations, but on its own terms. As for the June 30 transition, observers feel it's going to seem somewhat anti-climactic since the interim government is already up and running.
In fact, Brahimi had started by approaching technocrats, but had met with refusals, according to an Arab source in Washington. Brahimi seems to have got closest last week with nuclear scientist Mohammed Shahristani, a technocrat with no party affiliation, but in the end Shahristani also declined.
At the time, the U.S. State Department did not confirm what turned out to be a leak, but said that Shahristani was on a shortlist of three names. The names of the other two were not revealed.
Al-Yawer's first act was to call for full sovereignty. Unlike his all powerful predecessor Saddam Hussein, al-Yawer is a ceremonial head of state, and the political power rests with Allawi. But as chief of the huge Shammas tribe numbering some 3 million followers, al-Yawer, a Washington-trained engineer, has a power base of both Sunni and Shiites because his tribe includes members of both religious groups.
The next phase is to define what sovereignty for Iraq actually means. A Security Council draft resolution submitted jointly by the United States and Britain and setting out Iraq's future was withdrawn for revision when it was virtually torn to shreds by critics in the council. The revised text was circulated Tuesday.
At the insistence of some council members, a representative of the new Iraqi government -- probably Foreign Minister Haysher Zabari -- will meet the Security Council to spell out what the Iraqis want.
Key issues such as when the Multi-National (mainly American) Force quits Iraq, and how its unified U.S.-British command relates to the Iraqi government, will have to be addressed in the resolution. China -- one of the five permanent Security Council members along with the United States, Britain, France and Russia, is insisting that the MNF mandate should end in January 2005, following national elections.
The Chinese demand is backed by France, Germany, Mexico, Spain and possibly other council members.
Divergences between Washington and its allies are likely to be discussed when President Bush visits Italy and France later this week for D-Day and other World War II commemorations. Bush is scheduled to meet with President Jacques Chirac, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. A U.N. Security Council debate on the resolution is then likely to be held around June 12.
Meanwhile, the new interim government faces the challenge of public acceptance. The first reaction was consistent with today's Iraq. Within minutes of the al-Yawer announcement, bombs and mortar shells exploded in the Iraqi capital. On Wednesday, the onslaught continued with a car bomb in a Baghdad suburb that claimed at least four lives.
