Saturday, September 13, 2003
Powell calls French timetable for Iraq 'totally unrealistic' - The Washington Times: World
As the foreign ministers of the U.N. Security Council's five permanent powers gather here today for a wide-ranging discussion on the U.N.'s role in Iraq, Mr. Powell issued a blunt condemnation of a plan floated by his French counterpart, Dominique de Villepin.
The de Villepin plan, outlined yesterday in the French newspaper Le Monde, calls for a new constitution for Iraq by this fall and the restoration of full sovereignty to an Iraqi government in six months.
The program, which is in response to a U.S. draft resolution on Iraq now before the Security Council, would relegate the U.S.-dominated Coalition Provisional Authority to a subordinate role in the political and economic reconstruction of the country.
The French plan is "totally unrealistic," Mr. Powell told reporters in a briefing aboard his plane last night before landing in this Swiss city.
"You would like it if one could do it, but one can't do it."...
Impression: I love it when Powell talks dirty. Sounds like things are shaping up a bit better than we might have worried, with the Administration going begging back to our enemies at the UN. If Powell sticks to his guns on this, the French et.al. will just have to hold their noses and get on with it. Keep the slogan in mind: "No American Blood for French Oil!" We're not going to remove the dictator, free the people, expend the treasure and shed the blood only to turn the whole shebang over to an incompetant and perfidious UN, while our guys (and it will be a majority of our guys no matter what) expend their blood for bureaucrats.
Everyone involved wants the "occupation" to end as quickly as possible, but only the US and Britain have the investment and the interest of making it stick. In business, you'd never invest your time and money and then turn things over to a manager with no stake, particularly one who didn't want you to succeed in the first place, nor one who never thought the enterprise was worthwhile.
