Iraq Power Handover 'A Fraud'

Robert Fisk

[Transcript of an Australian Broadcasting Corporation broadcast with reporter Tony Jones, ABC]

TONY JONES: [...] The June 30th deadline now looks like it's going to be
postponed.

What will be the consequences if it is?

ROBERT FISK: Nothing. The handover is basically a fraud.

The governing council, which is appointed by the Americans, and which is the
Iraqi Government at the moment would merely be handing over to another group
of American-picked Iraqis.

They're not democratically elected, the new institution, whatever it is. We don't even know what it's going to be.I notice that when President Bush gave his press conference three days ago,
he said that Mr Brahimi was working on that, referring to Lakhdar Brahimi,
the former Algerian foreign minister who's special envoy to Iraq for the
UN's Kofi Annan, but Mr Brahimi found that quite a surprise.

He's not trying to put together a future government — he's trying to arrange
elections and that may not be until next year.

Even if there was a democratically elected government to hand over
sovereignty to, which is there not, the sovereignty doesn't mean anything
because under the laws that Paul Bremer, the US proconsul in Baghdad has
already enacted for post June 30, all the Iraqi security forces will be
commanded by United States officers, so that's not a handover of
sovereignty.

TONY JONES: The Americans obviously were putting a lot of faith in Mr
Brahimi performing some kind of miracle.

You think that's not going to happen.

Could, however, the United Nations be under much more pressure now to get
seriously involved in perhaps taking over the administration of Iraq?

ROBERT FISK: Well, the poor old UN.

Full story: ABC