A great deal is at stake in the talks on Iraq between United States and British officials, Iraqi representatives and the United Nations Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, which began yesterday in New York.
Having gone to war without an explicit UN mandate and restricted its involvement afterwards, the coalition now wants the UN to be involved in legitimising a transfer of power to a selected Iraqi leadership and to be in place when US troops begin to withdraw from next July. Mr Annan is rightly wary of accepting such responsibilities without a major change in control of these processes, giving the UN the vital and central role it has previously been denied. There are understandable suspicions that this timetable is dictated by Mr Bush's electoral agenda and to disguise continuing indirect US political control through proxy Iraqi nominees and a continuing effective military occupation in a new format.
These suspicions are shared by Mr Annan's advisers, by other Security Council members - and increasingly vocally by a developing movement of Shia clerics and citizens in Iraq itself. Thousands of them joined demonstrations yesterday to demand direct elections for an assembly to write a constitution and choose an interim government next June. The senior Shia cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has determinedly focused on these demands. The occupation authorities say it is too soon to have direct elections because political and administrative arrangements cannot be put in place for them. Instead representatives would be selected by regional and sectional caucuses.
No wonder there are suspicions the US does not want to empower factions it does not like and that it is seeking to place its own favourites in positions of power as it effects a limited withdrawal. As one of Mr Annan's officials put it, "when you say the Iraqis want us in there, which Iraqis want us to do what?". Mr Annan is rightly worried about security for UN staff following the disastrous attack which killed so many senior officials there last October (after which he ordered the mission to withdraw) and by continuing violent resistance to the occupation. Mr Paul Bremer, head of the US-led occupation authority in Baghdad, hopes a UN political fact-finding mission will convince Ayatollah al-Sistani that elections should be delayed.
If progress is to be made the UN will have to secure a firm guarantee of its authority and responsibilities in Iraq. This would allow a more internationalised security force to be put in place and a more legitimate transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis under agreed democratic auspices.