The Hindu : 'Only U.N. can oversee Iraq reconstruction'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Apr 13, 2003

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'Only U.N. can oversee Iraq reconstruction'

ST. PETERSBURG April 12. The leaders of France, Germany and Russia today wound up a two-day "peace camp" summit on Iraq stressing the primacy of law as embodied in the United Nations as the means of resolving global crises.

Russia's President, Vladimir Putin, his French counterpart, Jacques Chirac, and the German Chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, demanded a central role for the world body in the reconstruction of Iraq but implicitly acknowledged their powerlessness by ending their meeting without a joint declaration.

Mr. Putin told an audience of jurists at the Saint Petersburg Law Faculty that the three leaders, who had strongly opposed the United States-led drive to war on Baghdad without U.N. approval, agreed that only the U.N. could oversee the rebuilding of Iraq.

"The United Nations must play a central role to assure Iraq's sovereignty," said Mr. Chirac.

In comments likely to further strain relations with Washington, the three leaders said the future world order was at stake as only the U.N. could ensure that Iraq's reconstruction was taking place within the framework of international law.

Mr. Schroeder, who was awarded an honorary law degree from the University where Mr. Putin himself once studied, stressed that "the U.N. Security Council must confer legitimacy" on any reconstruction efforts in Iraq.

"The United Nations is the only organisation that rests on universal and cooperative notions."

AFP

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