Word: bremers
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...holiest shrines, the Imam Ali mosque in Najaf. Among the more than 80 people killed was Ayatollah Mohammed Bakr al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq - the most important Shiite group participating in the Iraqi Governing Council appointed by U.S. viceroy Paul Bremer...
...Ayatollah's sanction would have been important in establishing the body's legitimacy. Ironically - and not necessarily coincidentally - last week's bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad killed Sergio Vieira De Mello, the UN special envoy who had persuaded the leaders of SCIRI to join Bremer's Council. Now a second voice supporting participation in the body has been silenced. The Baathists certainly have a vested interest in ensuring the IGC's failure - after all, they're fighting an insurgency against foreign occupation, but if the IGC takes root as the basis of a new Iraqi government, those wanting...
...control. That goal is shared by the U.S., although many of its allies - including Britain - have argued that the United Nations has more legitimacy than the occupying powers to oversee such a transition. Legitimacy is a growing concern given the security situation in Iraq, and even the leaders of Bremer's handpicked Council appear to be trying to establish their own legitimacy among ordinary Iraqis by distancing themselves from the occupation...
...course, suffers from the fact that it was handpicked by Bremer, and even then its internal divisions are such that it could only agree to a presidency rotated on a monthly basis, and has yet to appoint a cabinet six weeks after its inception. Until such time as the IGC or some more directly representative Iraqi body offers a viable option for transferring sovereign authority to Iraqis, the price of UN Security Council endorsement of an international security force is likely to be putting the UN in charge of the political transition process - as is the case in Afghanistan...
...more pressing impetus for compromise with international allies may be the financial burden of managing postwar Iraq. It can't have pleased the Bush administration that in a week when the Washington was scolded by the IMF for projecting for next year a record deficit of $480 billion, Ambassador Bremer told the Washington Post that Iraq would next year need "several tens of billions of dollar" in foreign aid. White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan retorted that the Bush administration would ask for more money from Congress to fund Bremer's mission, but only once it has "responsible numbers." Still...