BAGHDAD, 25 May 2004 — A new US-British drafted UN Security Council resolution sets no date for US-led troops to leave Iraq. The draft was presented to the Security Council by the United States and Britain yesterday as Washington fought to contain the anger of Iraqis over the bombing of a wedding party in the remote west on Wednesday.
The new Iraq resolution would back the formation of a “sovereign interim government” that would take office by June 30 and says that government would “assume the responsibility and authority for governing a sovereign Iraq.”
The draft emerged as President George W. Bush prepared a televised speech later mapping out his plans for Iraq.
As part of the transition process, UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, now in Baghdad, is due to name a president, a prime minister, two vice presidents and 26 ministers before the end of May. They would stay in office until elections for a national assembly, expected to be held by January 2005.
The definition of sovereignty is a contentious issue, with the Bush administration attempting to assure UN Security Council members they would not be asked to approve an occupation under another name.
British Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry told reporters in New York the resolution “underlines clearly that all sovereignty will be returned to the Iraqis, that the interim Iraqi government will assume total responsibility for its own sovereignty.”
But the text is bound to run into criticism from France, Germany, Russia and others who opposed the Iraqi invasion last year. It does not give a definite timetable for the US-led forces to leave and instead calls for a review after a year, which a new Iraqi government can request earlier.
A review, however, would be similar to an open-ended mandate and would not mean the forces would leave unless the Security Council, where the United States has veto power, decides it should do so.
No date was set for a vote on the resolution, which will be the subject of intense discussion in the coming days.
The resolution, contrary to expectations, is silent on an opt-out clause that would allow Iraqi troops to refuse a command from the American military. Instead it calls for arrangements “to ensure coordination between the two.”
Diplomats said once a new Iraqi government is in place, its leaders would exchange letters with the US military command and the Security Council on military arrangements . The resolution is also silent on prisoners and jails run by the United States and other forces, on the fate of those now incarcerated and those imprisoned in the future.
On oil, the draft resolution says Iraq would have control over its oil revenues. But it would keep in place an international advisory board, which audits accounts, to assure investors and donors that their money was being spent free of corruption, UN envoys said.
Bombing Angers Iraqis
Meanwhile, new video footage showing Iraqis celebrating a desert wedding raised more questions about the US airstrike last week that killed 40 people.
The US military insisted most of the dead were foreign fighters who had slipped over the nearby Syrian border. Local people say the Americans massacred wedding guests.
Associated Press Television News said it had obtained the footage from a survivor of the strike early on May 19.
A Baghdad musician, a drummer who said he was the only survivor of the 10-man band which played at the party, said the film was shot Monday, May 17 — the second of three days of wedding celebrations which ended with the attack.
The film shows pick-up trucks racing across the desert — some of the dead came from the regional capital Ramadi — men dancing in a tent, children larking about and a musician playing an electric organ. The same man later appeared dead in a shroud.
Basem Ishab Mohamed, the drummer, identified the organist as Mohaned, brother of noted Baghdad wedding singer Hussein Al-Ali, who also performed at the wedding. Both were killed when US aircraft struck in the early hours of Wednesday, he said.
Mohamed and other witnesses said festivities ended on Tuesday at about 10.30 p.m. when US military aircraft began circling overhead. They surveyed the area for four hours before the deadly strike at about 3 a.m.
He said he escaped from a tent where he and the other male wedding guests had been asleep and crawled hundreds of meters on his stomach until he reached a nearby house. He returned in the morning to find more than 40 dead, including women, children and his fellow musicians.
Mohamed dismissed the US suggestion that the target had been a safe house for foreign fighters. “The people raised livestock and crops and nothing else,” he said.
At a hospital in Ramadi, where many of the dead and injured were taken, survivors were united by their anger at the US attack.
Britons Killed in Blast
Violence continued in Iraq yesterday. Several blasts rocked Baghdad, killing five people, including two Britons, while clashes between US troops and Shiite militiamen left 18 people dead in the populous Sadr City neighborhood.
Two British civilians were killed and two others were wounded in one of the explosions that destroyed an armored civilian vehicle just outside the coalition headquarters. Hospital officials said 18 civilians were killed in the populous Sadr City neighborhood, but the coalition put the figure at 26 and said all were militiamen loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr.
— Additional input from agencies
