IRAQ: Iraq will need foreign troops to fight insurgents even after the US-led occupation formally ends in the three weeks required by the unanimously adopted UN resolution, Iraq's interim Prime Minister said.
"The sovereignty is going to be total, is going to be complete," Mr Iyad Allawi told Fox News, in an interview to be aired yesterday. "We ask in fact and we want the ... multinational forces to help us to face the security threats until such a time that we are able to build our own security and move ahead."
The United States and Britain hailed the passage of the resolution that endorses a "sovereign interim government" in Iraq, and mandates a US-led multinational force to keep the peace.
Compromises offered by Washington and London - at French and German insistence - over how much control Iraqis will have over US-led forces helped overcome council divisions, but few expect the resolution to calm daily violence in Iraq soon.
Iraqi Kurds, unhappy with the omission of any reference to an interim constitution that guarantees their autonomy, said they might quit Mr Allawi's newly formed government in protest.
"All the struggles we made last year have been lost ... we have seen how democracy can be usurped," said Public Works Minister Mr Nasreen Berwari.
"If the leadership calls on us to withdraw from the government, we will do so."
Iraq's hugely influential Shia cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who objects to the interim constitution's safeguards for Kurdish rights, reiterated this week he would oppose any UN resolution that mentioned the document.
President Bush, hosting a summit of the Group of Eight industrial nations on Sea Island, Georgia, said the 15-0 council vote was "a great victory for the Iraqi people".
His British war ally, Mr Tony Blair, described it as an important milestone towards a democratic Iraq, but warned of "difficult and dangerous days" ahead.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who opposed the Iraq war, called the resolution a step forward, but said: "Surely it will take quite a long time before the adoption of the document will have any impact on the real change on the ground in Iraq." Algeria's UN ambassador, Mr Abdallah Baali, whose country is the only Arab nation on the 15-member Security Council, said: "The future remains loaded with dangers and uncertainties."
Mr Blair, who has gambled his political future on the Iraq venture, called for international unity. "We all now want to put the divisions of the past behind us and unite behind the vision of a modern, democratic and stable Iraq that can be a force for good, not just for Iraqis but for the whole region and thus the whole world," he said.
The resolution endorses a timetable leading to elections for a transitional government by January. More elections will be held within the following year after a constitution is written.
The measure puts Iraq in charge of its oil proceeds and asks the UN to help with elections, drafting of a constitution and other tasks.
It gives the interim government the right to order US-led troops to leave, and makes clear the mandate of the international force will expire by the end of January 2006.
- (Reuters)