Annan sees World Order in Crisis after Iraq War

Debate on the UN’s Role/ Bush Accepts Responsibility for the Uranium Deception

By Frankfurter Rundschau online

[This article originally published in: Frankfurter Rundschau online July 31, 2003 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web,

http://www.fr=aktuell.de/startseite/startseite/?cnt=261748.]

[The world order has fallen into a crisis in the opinion of UN General Secretary Kofi Annan through the Iraq war and conflicts in Africa. The international system and institutions like the UN must be reinvented. For the first time, US president George W. Bush assumed personal responsibility for controversial misstatements against Iraq that the country sought to buy uranium in Africa.]

New York/ Baghdad, July 31, 2003

The United Nations was forced to an outsider role by the Iraq war, Annan grieved Thursday in New York. “What are the rules when we consider allowing preventive strikes or wars as a response to these new threats?”, Annan asked. Who makes the decision? “Was Iraq only an exception? Or is it a precedent for others?” The UN chief proposed that leading statesmen discuss these questions at the next general debate of the UN General Assembly in September.

Annan said the answer of the international community to the single-handed effort of the US in Iraq is “loud and clear. The UN and multilateralism are vital for us.” According to Annan’s perspective, the community is only ready to help the allied occupiers in Iraq with a clear mandate of the UN Security Council. “We need a second resolution before we risk our lives in Iraq.”

On Wednesday US president Bush first assumed personal responsibility for false information about the Iraqi threat in his State of the Union address. “I assume full personal responsibility for everything I said”, Bush declared in Washington. He referred to a passage from his January speech. Appealing to British sources, he said Iraq sought uranium in Africa. The report turned out to be falsified. The US had admitted this in the meantime.

According to a report of the British Guardian, the CIA, the US secret service, criticized the first Iraqi dossier of the London government in several points. Before the dossier’s publication in September, the CIA warned Prime Minister Tony Blair of the exaggeration that Iraq’ Saddam Hussein could strike with his weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes. The British bio-weapons expert David Kelly had criticized this statement. His suicide will be judicially investigated. Blair defended his assertion again and again against skeptical voices.

The British Foreign minister already admitted having been warned by the US secret service. In the past only the distortions about the alleged Iraqi uranium purchases were made known. However the CIA questioned the British information in several regards according to the Guardian’s Thursday report.

The Iraqis should choose a political leader in a year. The head of the US-civilian administration, Paul Bremer, announced this at the reopening of the foreign ministry in Baghdad. On that same night, two US soldiers were killed in Iraq.

Around 1000 Polish soldiers were sent to Iraq. They should assume administration of five Iraqi provinces as a multinational troop.