By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 16 2004 (IPS)

In a bygone era, whenever the United States was hip-deep in military trouble overseas, the resounding battle cry in the nation’s capital was: ”Send in the Marines!”

But as violence in Iraq escalates – and U.S. casualties mount – Washington has come up with a new face-saving demand to get out of a military quagmire: ”Send in the United Nations.”

A high-powered delegation of U.S.-appointed Iraqis will visit the world body next week to arm-twist Secretary-General Kofi Annan to return his once-traumatised international staff to Baghdad.

That demand is being strongly supported by the U.S.-run, Baghdad-based Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) whose head, Ambassador Paul Bremer, will join the three-way talks beginning Monday.

But U.N. employees, who lost 22 of their colleagues in the bombing of the U.N. compound in Baghdad last August, are not enthused.

”Until and unless the security environment in Iraq shows signs of improvement, it will be a tragic mistake to ask U.N. staffers to return to Baghdad,” Guy Candusso, vice president of the U.N. Staff Union, told IPS on Friday.

”The Jun. 30 caucus elections have no legitimacy because they were set up by the United States to meet the election needs of the administration (of President George W. Bush) as a demonstration to the American people that there is a plan for exiting Iraq,” Ratner said.

”They are also not truly democratic as the vote is not a one-person, one-vote election, but a caucus vote largely dominated by the Iraqi Governing Council appointed by the United States,” he added.

The U.S. plan is to transfer power to an interim Iraqi government created by a legislature chosen by provincial caucuses in June – until nation-wide elections are held in 2005.

”The United Nations is really being asked to make this flawed process appear legitimate,” Ratner said.

The U.S. pressure on the United Nations is ”obviously intense”, he said, ”and I fear they will again buckle under, as they did in passing a resolution giving legitimacy to the U.S. military occupation”.

Ironically, the United States desperately tried to avoid going to the U.N. Security Council for a vote on its planned attack on Iraq last April.

Now, says Ratner, Washington is still unwilling to give up real power.

”The United States is still insisting on the United Nations playing a fig leaf role, while Washington retains all of the power,” Ratner said.

Adnan Pachachi, who holds the rotating presidency of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council and will lead the Iraqi delegation to the talks, told a London newspaper Thursday, ”if the United Nations is unable or unwilling to play a big role in Iraq, that would be a matter of great regret to us”.

Asked whether Annan would agree to send employees back to Baghdad, U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard told reporters Friday, ”the actual decision to return (to Iraq) would rely primarily on a security assessment, along with an assessment of the significance of the future U.N. role in Iraq”.

According to Friday’s edition of the ‘New York Times’, people close to Annan say he has rarely been in a more uncomfortable position.

”For months, he has wanted the United Nations to oversee Iraq’s transition to self-government. But he did not want it to be seen as merely giving in to an American plan worked out with Iraqis chosen by Mr. Bremer,” the Times said.

Chris Toensing, editor of ‘Middle East Report’, thinks the new U.S. strategy also includes a hidden agenda closely linked to the presidential elections in November, when Bush is up for re-election.

But he suggests that strategy will not be accepted in the occupied country.

”Having ‘liberated’ Iraqis from Saddam Hussein’s grip, the occupation authority cannot now expect Iraqi aspirations to conform to U.S. formulae for ‘democracy’ or to the Bush presidential campaign’s timetable,” Toensing said in an interview.

Already, the upcoming caucuses elections are being strongly opposed by the grand ayatollah of Iraq’s Shiite Muslims, Ali al-Sistani, who is calling for nationwide elections by June.

At the same time, said Toensing, Bush badly needs to stage-manage the transition in Iraq, because the impression that the United States has ”cut and run”, or the appearance of chaos, could dampen the strong turnout of conservatives the president will need to win in November.

”Add the White House’s obsession with winning, to the strategic interest of the United States in a stable, predictable Iraq, and it seems unlikely that Washington would allow the break-up of the country. U.S. troops will remain to prop up whatever fragile order emerges,” he added.

Stephen Zunes, professor of politics at the University of San Francisco, told IPS the United Nations would probably not want to get deeply involved until officials were convinced that elections would truly represent the Iraqi people – not be just a means of validating what would amount to a U.S. protectorate.

”Such reluctance to offer support for U.S. plans is based both on legal principles enshrined in the U.N. charter, as well as concern for the safety of U.N. personnel, since as long as the Iraq people feel they are not being offered genuine self-determination, violent resistance will continue,” said Zunes, author of ‘U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism’.

The United States, which publicly says the June deadline is too short, fears that such an election would bring the Shiite majority to power resulting in the installation of an ”Islamic fundamentalist” government in Baghdad, which is anathema to the Bush administration.

The current political chaos in Iraq could also threaten to break up Iraq along ethnic lines, into Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish territories.

But Zunes says Washington would hate to see Iraq divided.

”An independent Kurdish state in the north would inspire Kurdish separatists in Turkey, (an ally in NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation), and an independent Arab Shiite state in the south could stir up the restive Shiite populations in Bahrain, Kuwait and northeastern Saudi Arabia.

”Ideally, Washington would like some kind of federal system where there is a weak central government it could dominate but Iraq would remain whole,” he added.

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