US: While US officials publicly denied that Tuesday's bomb attack on the UN reflected a broader descent into chaos, diplomats in Washington said yesterday there was a growing urgency in the administration's pursuit of oreign troop contributions to Iraq.
That sense of urgency has prompted a return to a debate the US administration had considered resolved - the question of whether to turn to the UN to endorse an international troop presence in Iraq. However, the outcome of yesterday's discussion by President Bush's leading national security advisers was far from clear. The Defence Secretary, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, a staunch opponent of UN or NATO involvement, was away in Honduras, but the vice-president, Mr Dick Cheney, shares his views.
Nations that Washington had counted on to provide troops, such as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, who, by some estimates, could provide up to 40,000 soldiers, have been reluctant to send forces without a UN mandate.
Most security council members have refused to contemplate a UN peacekeeping mandate unless Washington cedes some military and civilian authority to international organisations. That is too high a price for the administration hawks. Even a NATO operation with its inevitable "command by committee" is anathema.
"This administration has had no patience for rolling up its sleeves and sitting at the table with other nations and asking: 'How are we going to do this thing?' " one Democratic official on Capitol Hill said. "But there is an implicit trade-off in this. If you want the world with you you've got to share some of the authority." The administration has shrugged off calls from Democrats and Republicans for more American troops to be added to the 139,000-strong US force.
"The security problem now has got a terrorist dimension, which is new, but the rest of the security is in better shape than it was three months ago when I arrived here," Mr Paul Bremer, the US diplomat running the civil administration of Iraq, said, arguing that the force did not need to be enlarged for the time being. "We have an element of terrorism. It does not mean chaos."
Mr Ivo Daalder, a strategic analyst at the Brookings Institution and the author of a forthcoming book on the Bush administration's foreign policy, America Unbound, said he believed the hardliners were prepared to "tough out" the insurgency, at least until Saddam Hussein is captured or killed. "The dirty little secret in Iraq is that if we do get Saddam we will go home. We'll say we're done and now it's Iraq for the Iraqis, or just hand it over to the UN."
However, if the US leaves chaos behind it, and if Iraq becomes a breeding ground for terrorism, a withdrawal could severely damage Mr Bush's political standing, Mr Daalder said. "This could ultimately be the administration's undoing," he added.
"It is becoming increasingly clear each day that the administration misread the situation on the ground in Iraq and lacks an adequate plan to win the peace and protect our troops," Senator John Kerry, a Democratic presidential contender, said.