6.4 |
Planning and preparation for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, mid-2001
to January 2003
756.
The Coalition
would make clear that it would transfer authority from a
transitional
military
government to UN administration as soon as possible, but in
practice that could
take up to
six months. The UN would then “rule” Iraq for about three years,
during
which time
a new Iraqi constitution would be agreed, paving the way for the
formation
of a
sovereign Iraqi government. The US would continue to have “overall
responsibility”
for security.
757.
The Cabinet
Office did not define “representative and democratic”. The
phrase
contrasted
with the more equivocal language in the FCO paper on scenarios for
the
future of
Iraq, which proposed that the UK “should argue for political
reform, but not
necessarily
full democracy in the short term”, and with the reference to
“effective and
representative
government” in the agreed definition of the desired end state,
which was
quoted
elsewhere in the Cabinet Office paper.
758.
The paper
listed five priorities facing the transitional military government
to be
established
by the Coalition after the collapse of the Iraqi
regime.
759.
The first,
“establishing security”, was to be achieved by disbanding the
“inner rings”
of Saddam
Hussein’s security apparatus. There would need to be screening of
officers in
the
security forces. Some would be demobilised, some imprisoned and
some tried.
760.
The four other
priorities were:
•
Dismantling
WMD.
•
Addressing
humanitarian needs. A UN presence would need to be
established
as soon as
possible, accompanied by “a version of OFF”. There would
be
a separate
need for emergency work on infrastructure involving close
co-
ordination
with civilian development agencies.
•
Planning
for a revival of the economy, which would require close
co-operation
with
international financial institutions.
•
Preparing
for a UN administration. “A major task would be to decide as
early
as possible
on the shape of a UN administration, and begin setting up as
soon
as the
conflict ends. The Secretary-General, under guidance from the
Security
Council,
would instruct the UN system to produce the necessary plan.
Planning
for SSR,
economic recovery, and long-term reconstruction would also
take
place.”
761.
The paper’s
description of a possible UN administration drew heavily on
the
FCO paper
on an international administration for Iraq described earlier in
this Section.
It went
further than the FCO paper in proposing that a “UN Mission to Iraq
(UNMI)”
might be
modelled on UNMIK, the UN Mission in Kosovo, where different roles
had
been
sub-contracted by the UN to other multilateral bodies (the FCO
paper listed the
Kosovo
model as one of a number of UN operations that could offer useful
lessons).
Organisations
like the World Bank, OIC, UN and possibly the EU might lead on
different
strands.
The paper proposed a parallel security structure under direct US
military
239