Annan played down Iraqis criticisms that key members of the new government had been selected behind the scenes by Washington or the US-appointed Governing Council, and he praised the role played by his special envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi.
Brahimi “has had to make compromises to move the process ahead. It was never going to be easy. He knew that,” Annan said.
“But now that the new government is installed, we all need to look forward and work for the handover of sovereignty and power to the Iraqis on June 30,” he told reporters.
“We’ve done exactly what we set out to do, and it was never intended that the UN would go and impose a government on the Iraqis. We had to discuss it,” he said. It had been the idea “right from the beginning” that the US provisional authority and the Governing Council would be involved in the talks leading to the choice of a new government. “So the fact that they were involved in the discussion shouldn’t be surprising,” he said.
He also said he had discussed the violence in Iraq with US President George W. Bush yesterday, stressing the need for the violence to abate if the return of power to Iraqis from the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority is to succeed. (Reuters)
