UN Security Council close to Iraq resolution deal

A last-minute addition to the US and Britain's Iraq resolution appears to have satisfied French and German demands to spell out Iraq’s “security partnership” with US-led forces.

US Ambassador John Negroponte said he expects the Security Council to approve the resolution this afternoon, and council diplomats said the vote could be unanimous.

“We think this is an excellent resolution. It marks the fact that Iraq is entering into a new political phase, one where it is reasserting its full sovereignty,” Mr Negroponte said.

France wanted the resolution to state clearly that Iraq’s interim government will have authority over its armed forces, that Iraqi forces can refuse to take part in operations by the multinational force, and that the new government could veto “sensitive offensive operations” by the US-led force.

A revised draft sent to the 15-member Security Council yesterday – the fourth in two weeks – did not include any of these proposals.

But during closed-door consultations, the United States and Britain revised the draft to address the relationship between the international force that will provide security and the government that will assume power on June 30.

The text now notes “that Iraqi security forces are responsible to appropriate Iraqi ministers, that the government of Iraq has authority to commit Iraqi security forces to the multinational force to engage in operations with it.”

While the new language doesn’t mention an Iraqi veto, France’s UN. Ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere said: “There are a lot of improvements … the text is going in the right direction now.”

Germany’s UN Ambassador Gunter Pleuger said: “The French amendment was much clearer, but the new text reflects our concerns … and we can live with that.”

“I think we have reached a stage where the resolution has a very good text,” he said. “My feeling is we have found a compromise.”

Despite the calls by some council members for veto power, Iraq’s interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi didn’t specifically ask for such power in his letter to the Security Council.

Approval of the resolution would take debate over its contents off the agenda at the Group of Eight summit. US President George W Bush is hosting the summit, which starts today.