Recast in Key Iraq Role, U.N. Envoys Are Wary [View All]

[Snellius]

UNITED NATIONS, April 17 — The United Nations, once snubbed and excluded from the task of shaping Iraq's future, suddenly finds itself pressed to play the major role in that effort, but it is taking up the task with some foreboding.

"There is a mixture of vindication on the one hand and great apprehension on the other," said Edward Mortimer, a senior aide to Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Mr. Mortimer contrasted the recent calls for assistance from President Bush with the disparagement he said the United Nations had become used to from the administration. "It's quite nice when you've been generally dissed about your irrelevancy and then suddenly have people coming on bended knee and saying, `We need you to come back,' " he said. "On the other hand, it's quite unnerving to feel you're being projected into a very violent and volatile situation where you might be regarded as an agent or faithful servant of a power that has incurred great hostility."

With time running out on the June 30 deadline for transfer of power, the United Nations is being looked to as the only institution that can confer immediate global legitimacy on the American goal of bringing representative government to Iraq.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/18/international/middleeast/18NATI.html