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Security council ends sanctions Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/index.cfm?id=578932003http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/index.cfm?id=578932003
Security Council ends Iraq sanctions
JASON BEATTIE CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
THE UNITED Nations Security Council voted 14-0 yesterday to lift 13 years of sanctions on Iraq, endorsing US and British control of the country and its oil revenues until a new government is established.
The resolution marked a major diplomatic victory for the US and saved the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, from embarrassing questions about the legality of the coalition operation in Iraq.
A leaked report of legal advice to the British government had showed it suggested the occupying powers could be in breach of international law if they remained in Iraq without UN approval.
The US-sponsored resolution gives the UN a role in setting up a democratic government in Iraq, through a UN representative to be appointed by the organisation’s secretary general, Kofi Annan.
The French foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, one of the most eloquent and outspoken opponents of war, insisted: "The United Nations is back in the game." The resolution won the backing of France, Germany and Russia without major concessions. Syria was the only Security Council member absent from the UN vote yesterday.
The resolution said Washington and London can manage Iraq and its oil revenues "until an internationally recognised, representative government is established".
Council diplomats said they expect Iraqi oil exports to resume quickly. Some 8 million barrels of Iraqi oil stored at the Turkish port of Ceyhan, one of Iraq’s two export terminals, can now be sold immediately.
The resolution will being a sigh of relief for the White House. As well as patching up an unholy international squabble, it stamps a UN seal on a post-war operation that has highlighted the level of economic and political chaos in Iraq after a quarter-century of Saddam Hussein’s rule.
US troops are still struggling to return a semblance of law and order to Baghdad. No hard evidence of weapons of mass destruction, the public justification for the war, has emerged.
Plans for an interim Iraqi government have been delayed, amid little sign that political and religious factions are coalescing on a single platform or leader.
Downing Street will also be relieved. According to the leaked legal document, Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, advised Mr Blair that a further Security Council resolution was needed "to authorise imposing reform and restructuring of Iraq and its Government".
He concluded: "In the absence of a further Security Council resolution ... it is likely to be difficult to justify the legality of the continued occupation of Iraq once the disarmament requirements of the relevant Security Council resolutions have been completed."
Critics interpreted Lord Goldsmith’s document as evidence the US had acted unlawfully by offering contracts for reconstruction and by setting in place the foundations for an interim Iraqi authority. That is a harder case to make after the UN vote.
The Prime Minister yesterday insisted the British had acted entirely in accordance with the law as set out by the Attorney General.
Speaking at his monthly Downing Street press conference, Mr Blair said: "I’m not going to comment on the precise nature of the Attorney General’s advice except to say this: that his advice throughout has been that the Government has been acting lawfully."
He added: "We would never act unlawfully in relation to this. If the Attorney General were to advise us that a particular course of action was unlawful, of course we would have to act on that advice."
Although the UN agreement made it an academic issue, calls were still made for Downing Street to publish all the legal arguments presented by Lord Goldsmith.
Clare Short, the former international development secretary, claimed the document vindicated her decision to quit the Government. "I thought the Attorney General’s advice was sacrosanct - it seems not."
Much of the seven-page resolution deals with arrangements to phase out the UN oil-for-food programme and transfer control of Iraq’s oil revenue from the UN to the US and Britain through a new Iraqi Development Fund.
Mr Annan will go through $10 billion (£6.1 billion) worth of contracts approved and funded under the programme and decide if they are still needed. Many contracts are with Russian companies.
Developments on the ground yesterday illustrated the conflicting fortunes of the slow-moving reconstruction effort.
US forces yesterday captured Aziz Saleh al-Numan, a former senior Baath Party leader who is number eight on the list of the 55 most-wanted Iraqis. Numan was identified as Baath’s regional command chairman responsible for west Baghdad, and is the highest-ranking person on the list of 55 taken into custody so far.
In the central city of Fallujah, however, a US armoured vehicle was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in a late-night ambush. No US casualties resulted, but residents said two Iraqi civilians were killed in the shooting that followed.
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