WASHINGTON, 28 April 2004 — The planned handover of power in Iraq will not work unless the country’s new rulers have an army with real power, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal said in an interview published by The Wall Street Journal yesterday.
A reconstituted Iraqi Army is the “linchpin” to ending the security problems confronting the US-led coalition, he added.
However, despite the present difficulties, the US-imposed deadline of June 30 for the transfer of sovereignty should not be postponed, he said.
“If you promise to transfer power on a certain date, you must transfer on the date you announce. But give it the credibility it needs. Give it its own armed forces, and those forces must have the power to be credible,” Prince Saud said.
In an interview with Reuters on Monday, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said the still-undefined government due to take power in Iraq on July 1 would have to give up some of its sovereignty to allow a free hand to US-led armed forces.
Powell said it would take time for the US-led forces to establish security and that the new government would need their help.
“I hope they will understand that in order for this government to get up and running — to be effective — some of its sovereignty will have to be given back, if I can put it that way, or limited by them,” Powell said.
“It’s sovereignty but (some) of that sovereignty they are going to allow us to exercise on their behalf and with their permission,” he added. “It is not as if we are seizing anything away from them.
“It is with the understanding that they need our help and for us to provide that help we have to be able to operate freely, which in some ways infringes on what some would call full sovereignty,” Powell said.
In his WSJ interview, Prince Saud said: “Unless you are really transferring authority, it doesn’t really mean anything.”
The Saudi foreign minister also said the absence of an Iraqi Army was one of the main reasons why Arab countries were reluctant to contribute peacekeeping troops to Iraq.
“Right now Saudi Arabia wouldn’t ask anybody to go to Iraq,” he said. “But you change the circumstances and that is a different ballgame.”
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He implied that a greater United Nations role in Iraq would be a welcome change, but added that at present it was not a viable option because the UN “has no power.”
“It has no money. It cannot spend one dollar without the signature” of the US authorities, he added.
Prince Saud said the disbanding of the Iraqi Army after the Iraq war last year was at the root of many of today’s difficulties.
“You cannot bring order to Iraq with 150,000 (coalition) troops,” he said. “That is just impossible.” He also criticized the decision last year to remove all members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party from power.
The United States should understand that it is difficult to “be an occupier who is loved by the people you are occupying,” he said.
Prince Saud was interviewed in New York, where on Monday he gave a speech to the Foreign Policy Association.
During the speech, he warned that US-Saudi relations were being dangerously undermined by misconceptions about alleged Saudi support for militant groups.
Prince Saud said he wanted to “sound the alert that the harmony of our long and fruitful relationship is threatened.”
Blaming elements of the media for demonizing the Kingdom, he cited a number of recent books that sought to portray Saudi Arabia’s internal social and political makeup as one that nurtures extremism and feeds terrorism. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said. “After last week’s events in Riyadh, I don’t think any reasonable person can cast doubts about our commitment to waging a relentless war on terrorism.”
Equating the actions and ideologies of the 9/11 hijackers with those of the Saudi people as a whole was, Prince Saud argued, not only erroneous but also counterproductive in the war against terrorism. “It is ironic that those who most vociferously attack Saudi Arabia are unwittingly serving the purposes of Al-Qaeda,” he said.
“The attacks lead to undermining a country that is probably most capable of not only waging the war against Al-Qaeda, but also in preventing Al-Qaeda spreading their cultist ideology in the Islamic world,” he said.
