Downing Street Says

Asked if the UK’s Special Representative in Iraq, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, had been indicating today that Coalition troops would be have to remain in Iraq for the longer term due to the escalating violence there, the PMOS said that Sir Jeremy had simply been making the point that it was impossible to say with any precision how long they would have to remain there. As Sir Jeremy had said, it was important to recognise that there was a concerted attempt to stop democracy establishing itself in Iraq. We would disagree fundamentally with those who suggested that democracy was an alien concept in Iraq. It wasn’t. The remarkable progress that had been made this week in reaching agreement on the Transitional Law showed that there was a determination amongst those who represented the Iraqi people to try to achieve that transition to democracy within the envisaged timescale. That was not to say, however, that there wouldn’t be further concerted attempts to disrupt that process. Nevertheless, there was a clear determination not to let that happen. Asked if the UK was committed to increasing the ‘security consequentials’ if we were going to stick to the timetable, the PMOS said that as we had learned from bitter experience, it was impossible to achieve a 100% level of security. It was easy for people to say that our armed forces should be able to prevent attacks. However, that was simply not a realistic expectation. The reality was that there was a concerted attempt going on to disrupt the process in Iraq and that further attacks, like the ones yesterday, would be inevitable. However, we were determined that such a thing should not be a distraction from the important work that was going on.

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Representing the Iraqi people and people chosen by the US to represent the Iraqi people are two different things. The INC members and others representing exile organisations are deeply mistrusted by the populace to say the least and yet they are still having a say in constitutional matters. The US has also merely placed ethnic representatives on the CPA, somehow ignoring the fact that there are such elements as left and right wing and other political sectors of an ethnic group of millions. So how "representative" they are is highly open to question. Not to say the US hasn’t also made decisions that should not be made until elected officials are in power (such as what should be privitised and what shouldn’t).

We will not know whether the constitution, legal system and those "representatives" in the CPA are acceptable to the Iraq populace until elections happen. We still have no idea when that will be.

If attacks like that in Karbala happen more regularly, we may be waiting longer than Afghanistan has for democracy to see the light of day in Iraq.
Comment by Schoolboy — 4 Mar 2004 on 8:51 pm | Link

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» Wednesday, March 3, 2004

Iraq

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