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reported of Bush's meeting with Kofi Annan Tuesday that, Kofi said, "The Iraqi Governing Council ... indicated that they would accept the conclusions of the U.N. team, so we do have a chance to help break the impasse which exists at the moment and move forward."
But Mr. Annan said the president pledged to support whatever agreement the United Nations can achieve for elections of a transitional Iraqi government, which the United States wants to take full control on July 1. "We are going to help them work out this problem, and hopefully, they will come to some consensus and agreement as to how to move forward," Mr. Annan said.
Say what? W. has pledged essentially to turn decision-making about the shape of Iraqi elections over to . . . the United Nations?
Dick Cheney and Richard Perle must be sitting at some bar on K street, haggard, and throwing back shots. "A year ago, the UN was history," they commiserate. "How did this happen?" (A tip of the hat to blogger Swopa, who was prescient about all this.
When Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani initially slammed the Nov. 15 agreement between the US and its appointed Interim Governing Council, which called for elections based on Coalition-appointed provincial councils, he left himself an out. He said that he insisted that direct elections be held unless the United Nations sent a commission to Iraq to investigate the situation thoroughly and then reported back that general elections simply could not be held. Sistani and his aides later made it clear that they expected the UN commission to recommend something much closer to democratic elections than envisaged by the Americans, in any case.
Paul Bremer's first instinct was to defy Sistani this time. He had the IGC take a vote, which rejected the Sistani plan. When some IGC members brought up the possibility of the UN commission, they reported that the Americans were "deeply offended" that the Iraqis now wanted to bring in the UN. One of the entire points of the Iraq war from the point of view of Cheney and Co. was to demonstrate the uselessness of the UN and authorize American multilateralism. Sistani and the IGC now seemed to be placing that achievement of the US Right in doubt.
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