US warned that oil cannot provide funds

A senior British official at the United Nations warned the United States yesterday that it should think twice before assuming it can administer post-conflict Iraq on its own terms.

Mark Malloch Brown, the director of the UN Development Programme, also said Iraq's crippled oil industry would not finance reconstruction after the war.

His candid remarks preface what is shaping to become another mammoth struggle between the powers in the UN Security Council over the role of the UN in running Iraq and helping it back to self-government. He said: "Maybe there are people in Washington who can't see round the next corner in the road and don't know where it goes, but eventually will."

There is growing alarm in UN circles at what appears to be plans by Washington to install its own government in Iraq, headed by retired Lieutenant-General Jay Garner. He and a group of carefully selected US officials are in Kuwait waiting for the moment to transfer to Baghdad and take over Iraqi ministries.

While Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, has kept fairly quiet about the UN role after the war, Mr Malloch Brown has decided to start speaking out. "We will be pushing to make as international and broad-based as possible the management of humanitarian and reconstruction needs," he said.

He added that achieving agreement on a resolution granting UN powers in Iraq may yet be hard and several weeks away given the bad diplomatic blood spilt when the war started. "The emotions are still high and a lot of damage has been done. But everything drives you back to that little table [in the Security Council] and a new resolution." General Garner, he predicted, "will not be left there indefinitely".

Any attempt by Washington to stifle the UN's role is likely to be resisted by other governments, Mr Malloch Brown asserted. "An international, UN-sanctioned administration of the country is likely to be condoned by many as indispensable," he said.

He quipped that the "triangulated Tony Blair" was "in maximum leg-split" as he attempted to stand by President George Bush while responding to the "European concern for a UN international role for post-conflict Iraq".

He also questioned any US calculations that depend on oil flows from Iraq to bankroll the reconstruction costs.

"My numbers don't add up like theirs do," he said. "The oil industry in Iraq needs a sustained burst of new investment before it can contribute significantly to the capital costs of reconstruction".