FRANCE: France said yesterday it wanted fast international recognition of Iraqi sovereignty but accepted it could take time before a full handover of power from US occupation forces was possible.
Big international powers meeting in Geneva at the weekend remained divided over Iraq's future. The US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, said a French timetable for a transfer of power from US authorities was unrealistically fast.
The French Foreign Ministry insisted it made a distinction between recognition of Iraqi sovereignty, which it would prefer within a month, and the transfer of executive powers.
"What's needed is a very strong political step recognising its sovereignty," a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.
Asked how long France, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, saw the handover of executive power taking, he gave no timeframe but pointed to earlier French statements that such a transition would in any case have to be progressive. "One has to be realistic," he said.
Last week the French Foreign Minister, Mr Dominique de Villepin, said France sought the recognition of Iraqi sovereignty "in a very short timeframe, for example, a month".
The French would then like a gradual handover of executive powers, including control of the oil-rich country's budgetary purse-strings, and general elections next year.
France has not published proposals on how Iraq's Governing Council and its newly appointed ministerial team should be formally recognised as the institutions that embody Iraqi sovereignty. But diplomatic sources in Paris suggest one possibility would be to offer them the Iraqi seat in the 191-nation UN General Assembly, empty since the war.
With US forces in Iraq suffering almost daily casualties from guerrilla attacks and costs of the occupation mounting, Washington is seeking a new UN resolution to encourage other countries to contribute more troops and cash.
But Security Council members including France, Germany and Russia have all criticised a draft US resolution to that end and demanded a bigger UN role and a quicker transfer of power. - (Reuters)