BAGHDAD, 4 September 2003 — The United States changed strategy on Iraq and sought to give the United Nations a larger role as a Polish-led force took command of a chunk of the country yesterday from US Marines.
Amid daily and often deadly attacks on US troops and other targets in Iraq, US President George W. Bush directed Secretary of State Colin Powell to open negotiations at the UN Security Council on a resolution designed to build a wider multinational force.
The United States said yesterday it would insist an expanded multinational force for Iraq fell under US command.
“The US will remain the commander...,” Powell told reporters in Washington as US officials talked of a draft UN resolution that envisaged elections to restore power to Iraqis. Washington previously appeared to have ruled out any bid for a new Security Council resolution encouraging more countries to contribute troops or other aid to help stabilize Iraq. But four major vehicle bomb attacks in a month and the refusal of some countries to contribute troops without a UN mandate seem to have swayed Bush into changing course. “We heard from the president that he is willing to follow the UN track, a larger responsibility for the UN, and that is very good,” Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said yesterday after a breakfast meeting with Bush in Washington.
In a move planned weeks ago, the Polish-led multinational force took command of the so-called Central-South zone from the Marines, who had been in charge of the area for several months. In Baghdad, new Iraqi ministers were sworn in and were set to get down to work in what the US-led administration says is another step toward handing the reins of power back to Iraqis.
The United States, whose forces have occupied Iraq since toppling Iraqi President Saddam Hussein on April 9, has about 150,000 soldiers in the country and is supported by about 21,000 others, 11,000 of them British. A wider UN role could also make it easier to gain reconstruction funds at a donors’ conference in Madrid in October, as many contributors are uneasy about the US-led occupation.
