Souring Relations

Monday's scheduled three-way meeting between the UN, Iraq's Interim Governing Council (IGC) and the occupying powers could accomplish more than just helping define a future UN role in Iraq.

It could also go a long way in shaping the IGC's relationship with the ruling Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). The shifting nature of that relationship has been a matter of speculation for weeks amid growing reports the IGC is beginning to take a more defiant stand towards the coalition.

The 19 January meeting with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has already exposed fault lines within the 25-member Governing Council and between the IGC and CPA. A 29 December letter from then-IGC President Abdel-Aziz Al- Hakim to Annan, pushing for a major UN role in the upcoming transfer of power, served only to add fuel to the fire.

Al-Hakim's letter -- which basically invited the UN to second guess Washington's power-transfer blueprint -- provoked a harsh response from CPA chief Paul Bremer. It also sparked dissension within the IGC itself. One deputy to a council member, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Al-Hakim had sent the letter without the approval of his fellow members and, in some cases, without their knowledge. Al-Hakim sent his appeal to Annan while he held the rotating monthly IGC presidency, the implication being he was speaking for the entire council.

Despite ruffled feathers there are incentives on all sides to engineer some sort of formal UN return to Iraq. The UN pulled its international staff out of Iraq in the wake of the 22 August bombing of its Baghdad headquarters. Its operations since have been restricted to a handful of local Iraqi staff coordinated from Jordan and Cyprus.

With domestic elections underway, the US is expected to welcome the political cover and reduced workload a UN return would supply provided it doesn't involve ceding too much authority.

"America is not going to go through all this war and cost and trouble just to surrender the country to the UN," said Nadim Eissa, a Baghdad University professor of political science. He predicted that Washington will seek to allow the UN "the most marginal role possible".

Annan, meanwhile, is likely to seek concrete guarantees in terms of both security and political power before allowing staff back in Iraq.

Nazem Abdel-Wahid Al-Jasur, head of Baghdad University's Centre for European Studies, predicts the UN may be asked to mediate between the CPA and Shi'ite spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani over the blueprint for Iraqi elections.

Though Al-Sistani holds no seat on the IGC his grass-roots influence is unquestioned and any proposals for elections or power transfer will have a hard time proceeding without his approval. The cleric may not have left his home since 1990 but as evidence of his power every IGC president in recent months has travelled to Najaf for a meeting. Adnan Pachachi, January's IGC president and the man who will lead the council's delegation to New York on Monday, made his pilgrimage to Najaf this week.

Al-Sistani opposes US and IGC approved election plans which call for a complex series of regional caucuses. He advocates direct elections in which Iraq's Shi'ite majority will presumably play the decisive role.

Al-Hakim is rumoured to have acted in coordination with Al-Sistani in making his appeal to Annan. And if Al-Sistani does support a meaningful UN return to Iraq, that factor alone may be the strongest card in Annan's hand.

"The role of the UN has to be a central one because no other organisation has the trust of the Iraqi people -- especially if Al-Sistani approves," Al-Jasur said.

Meanwhile, reports continue to surface of ongoing dissension between the IGC and the CPA. Several IGC members were said to be incensed over Washington's decision to classify Saddam Hussein as a prisoner of war.

"We are shocked and are in talks with the Coalition Provisional Authority about it because we were not consulted," said council member and former judge Dara Nuraddin. "The Pentagon declaration does not matter to us. He is a criminal. He committed crimes against Iraqis and will be judged in Iraq in front of an Iraqi tribunal."

Other reports point to the ongoing IGC review of the CPA appointed governors of Iraq's 18 provinces as further proof of the increasingly adversarial relationship. Four governors were declared unfit for office and one -- Babylon Governor Iskandar Jawad Witwit -- has already been fired. Bremer initially overruled the council's firing of Witwit in November but after a second council edict denounced him as a former member of the Ba'ath Party Bremer let the decision stand.

The ongoing debate over the exact nature of the proposed federalist system that will govern the new Iraq is likely to be the focus of the greatest disputes between the CPA and IGC. Just what federalism means has already been exhaustively debated, and the biggest detractors are the Kurds.

After 12 years of de facto autonomy under US protection, the Kurds have the most to lose by sublimating their national interests (and the Kirkuk oil fields) to a federalist system under the flag of an independent Iraq.

A source close to one Kurdish council member described the federalist discussions as heated, revealing that a Kurdish withdrawal from the council -- which would do untold damage to the prospects for a united Iraq -- has already been threatened.