U.N. in Pivotal, Difficult Iraq Role

NEW YORK —  It’s crunch time for U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who will come under pressure from the United States and its Iraqi allies today at a meeting to help rescue plans for forming a new Iraqi government by July.

If Annan agrees to send United Nations political and electoral experts back to Iraq in force, they will need extensive security protection from the United States -- and the authority to arrange the political transition without being overruled by U.S. occupation authorities, U.N. officials and analysts said. Otherwise, the U.N. risks sharing blame with the U.S. for a failure in the democratic experiment in Iraq.

If Annan declines to play a significant role, either for security reasons or because he feels the U.N. would not have sufficient authority to carry out its mission, he risks the U.N. being branded, as President Bush put it, “irrelevant.”

“I don’t think Kofi Annan has the luxury of walking away from this

“Nobody wants to see this process fail. Nobody can afford to see Iraq implode,” said one U.N. official. “But we want to keep the interests of the Iraqi people at the center of what we do, and we have to be careful in which way we go from here.”

The U.N.’s first attempt to play a role in postwar Iraq ended in tragedy. After major combat was over, the world body sent in a large team of political advisors headed by Annan’s special representative, Sergio Vieira de Mello -- but many at the U.N. thought the mission was ill-defined. Vieira de Mello and most of his key staff were killed Aug. 19, when a truck bomb struck U.N. headquarters in Baghdad.

It was a huge blow to Annan and the entire U.N. Secretariat, losing close personal friends -- and some of the world body’s most respected troubleshooters.

After the bombing, the U.N. withdrew its international staff. Although Annan recently agreed to send in a four-person team under U.S. protection to reassess the security situation, he has hesitated to send staff back to Baghdad without the means to protect them and a mission compelling enough to justify the risk.

“Kofi is angered at himself for letting Sergio go to Baghdad when the conditions weren’t right,” said Nancy Soderberg, a former U.S. envoy to the U.N. “He’s just not going to go back unless he feels the political situation is right.”

Nevertheless, now that the Bush administration wants the United Nations to play a more prominent political role, U.S. officials say Annan is weighing the consequences of not participating against the security risks.

“They’re very worried about that, but they also realize that this train is leaving the station,” a State Department official said. “They have valid security concerns, but the U.N. also operates in many other places in the world that are dangerous.... And you can’t play a role if you’re not on the ground.”

The bombing that killed at least 20 people Sunday at the gates of the U.S.-led occupation authority headquarters demonstrated yet again that security can’t be assured in Iraq. Some observers believe U.N. officials will be high-priority targets for insurgents, the more so if they are seen as effective in ushering in a democratic government.

Today’s meeting, called by Annan, will bring together L. Paul Bremer III, the top U.S. civilian official in Iraq, with Annan and members of the Iraqi Governing Council to discuss how the U.N. might help Iraq.

In a diplomatic game of “you-go-first” leading up to the meeting, Bremer said he was going to New York to hear what the U.N. was willing to do in Iraq, and U.N. officials said they were coming to hear what the Americans and Iraqis wanted them to do.

Unspoken, at least in public, were such touchy questions as whether the members of the Governing Council are in agreement about the U.N.’s role and whether the U.N. considers the U.S.-appointed council the legitimate representative of the Iraqi people.

“When you say the Iraqis want us in there, which Iraqis want us to do what?” the U.N. official said.

Also unclear is whether the White House is willing to cede substantial political authority to the U.N. before June 30, when authority is scheduled to be handed back to the Iraqis.

“The burden is really on the U.S. to define a role for the U.N., but they’ve never understood that the U.N. just can’t be their lapdog to go in and do the tiny little parts they define,” Soderberg said. “If they want to create a true partner in the U.N., the U.N. has a lot to offer.”

Bremer and other U.S. officials said last week that Washington wants broad U.N. assistance in implementing the handover agreement signed by Bremer and the Governing Council -- but is not willing to tinker with the timetable for transferring sovereignty.

The U.S. plans to have caucuses choose the transitional Iraqi government, but that idea is under attack by Iraqi’s leading Shiite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Sistani is demanding direct elections, even though Annan sent him a letter agreeing with the United States that free and fair elections won’t be possible by June 30.

In some ways, the United Nations is uniquely positioned to broker a face-saving compromise among Sistani, other Iraqi factions and the United States, argues Henri Barkey, a specialist in international relations at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. The compromise could involve a pledge to begin preparing for U.N.-supervised elections that might be held after the U.S. presidential election this year, Barkey said.

Under the current U.S. plan, popular elections would not be held until 2005.

“It’s a way out for Sistani,” Barkey said. “It’s also a way out for Bremer.”

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Times staff writer Maggie Farley contributed to this report.