With U.S. troops threatening Sunni insurgents in Falluja and Shi'ite rebels in Najaf, a U.N. envoy says force can not solve Iraq's problems. "I think that there is always a better solution than shooting your way into anywhere," Lakhdar Brahimi said of the standoffs in Iraq's flashpoint cities.
| Perhaps he should mention that to the Bad Guys... |
A few families who had fled fierce fighting in Falluja earlier this month walked back into the battle-scarred city on Saturday, hours after Iraq's U.S. administrator warned that "major hostilities could resume at short notice". Paul Bremer said "armed bands" in Falluja must give up their weapons and "submit to national authority" if a shaky ceasefire negotiated with civic leaders was to last. The United States, trying to shore up a shrinking coalition in Iraq, wants Brahimi to help choose an interim government to take back sovereignty from the U.S.-led occupation on June 30. Brahimi said he wanted Iraq's U.S.-backed Governing Council to dissolve on June 30 and the politicians who dominate it to be excluded from a caretaker government of technocrats that he thinks should see Iraq through to elections in January 2005. In an interview with the ABC News programme "This Week with George Stephanopoulos", due to be aired on Sunday, Brahimi dismissed the idea of any expansion of the existing 25-member council. "The fear is that, you know, as somebody put it, perhaps a bit too unkindly, they will clone themselves. And why do you want to have that?" said the former Algerian foreign minister, who is the U.N. secretary-general's special envoy to Iraq.
| Yasss... I think the original idea was to turn them into something like the General Assembly... |
President George W. Bush acknowledged that "tough work" lay ahead, saying the "enemies of freedom" would kill anyone in their way to try to evict America from Iraq. "But the stakes are too high for us to leave," he said on Friday at a fund-raiser in Florida for his November re-election campaign. |