"American-led Invasion of Iraq last Year was Illegal" - Annan by BBC News / The Independent / Agence France-Presse 10:52am 17th Sep, 2004   16 September, 2004    BBC World News: Excerpts: Annan interview    The United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, has said he believes the American-led invasion of Iraq last year was illegal and he cast doubt on plans to hold elections there in January. He also spoke about the situation in Sudan and the road map to peace in the Middle East which, he said, was in deep distress.    Below are substantial extracts from an interview he gave to Owen Bennett-Jones for BBC World Service at UN headquarters in New York:    Question (Q): Now elections, as you know, are due to be held in Iraq in January. Is it going to be possible to do that?    Kofi Annan (A): There's a lot that needs to be done. We have helped the Iraqis set up a legal framework for elections. Despite the security situation, I took a calculated risk and sent in two teams: one led by [Lakhdar] Brahimi, that helped them set up the interim government and another one led by Karina Pereira, who is the head of our electoral division and we helped them set up the legal framework for election political parties law, an independent electoral commission. And we've had some of the officers trained in Mexico and ready to go.    And there are quite a lot of things the Iraqis have to do themselves. We will advise and assist them, they will be running the elections not us. We will be giving advice and assistance and I hope they will be able to do everything they have to do but of course security will be a factor.    Q: But do you honestly expect elections in January? It sounds impossible.    A: You cannot have credible elections if the security conditions continue as they are now.    Q: And so you're saying there's a good chance there will not be elections in January?    A: Well the judgement - the main judgement - will have to be done, the judgement will have to be made by the Iraqi government which is going to run the elections who will be supporting them. Obviously there may come a time when we have to make our own independent assessment.    From our point of view and from the Charter point of view [the war] was illegal.    'Painful lessons'    Q: Are you bothered that the US is becoming an unrestrainable, unilateral superpower?    A: Well, I think over the last year, we've all gone through lots of painful lessons. I'm talking about since the war in Iraq. I think there has been lessons for the US and there has been lessons for the UN and other member states and I think in the end everybody is concluding that it is best to work together with our allies and through the UN to deal with some of these issues. And I hope we do not see another Iraq-type operation for a long time.    Q: Done without UN approval - or without clearer UN approval?    A: Without UN approval and much broader support from the international community.    Q: I wanted to ask you that - do you think that the resolution that was passed on Iraq before the war did actually give legal authority to do what was done?    A: Well, I'm one of those who believe that there should have been a second resolution because the Security Council indicated that if Iraq did not comply there will be consequences. But then it was up to the Security Council to approve or determine what those consequences should be.    Q: So you don't think there was legal authority for the war?    A: I have stated clearly that it was not in conformity with the Security Council - with the UN Charter.    Q: It was illegal?    A: Yes, if you wish.    Q: It was illegal?    A: Yes, I have indicated it is not in conformity with the UN Charter, from our point of view and from the Charter point of view it was illegal.    We need to assess where we are and where we go from here.    Road map 'in distress'    Q: On the Middle East we now have this proposed pull-out from Gaza. The Israeli prime minister [Ariel Sharon] has not really come to you with this, he's just cleared it through Washington... Wouldn't it just be easier to say the road map is finished, that's it?    A: The road map is in deep, deep distress - it's in deep distress. We haven't given it up yet. I know that statements have been made by leaders in the region, implying that they are moving away from the road map and I think in fact the quartet is going to be meeting next week. I don't know what sort of a meeting we are going to have to discuss the developments on the ground which has become very complex and very difficult.    They have problems on the Palestinian side and there are political problems on the Israeli side and of course we also have elections here in this country and we need to assess where we are and where we go from here and try and anticipate how things are going to evolve and what action we as the quartet would want to take.    'Atrocities' in Sudan    I made it clear to the Council that we don't have to wait for the results to act.    Q: The US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, has said that what's going on in Sudan is genocide, do you agree with him?    A:...I've talked about the atrocious and systematic and grave... gross violations of human rights and violations of international humanitarian law...    So all that will have to be looked at for one to make a determination and I think the [Security] Council is prepared... is discussing the issue of the setting up a commission.    Q: How long will it be before you're in a position to make that designation?    A: I can't give you a time. We are going to be prepared to move as quickly as possible. But I also made it clear to the Council that we don't have to wait for the results to act.    The situation is serious enough for us to take action to maintain the pressure on the government to do everything we can to assist the people in Sudan and they are going to support the expanded African force that is going to go into Sudan.    16 September 2004    "Annan declares Iraq war illegal and warns of election credibility", by Colin Brown and Patrick Cockburn. (The independent / UK)    Tony Blair last night suffered a fresh blow after Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, said the war in Iraq was "illegal". Speaking on the BBC World Service, Mr Annan said the war was "not in conformity" with the UN Security Council or with the UN Charter.    Asked if there was legal authority for the war on Iraq, Mr Annan said: "I have stated clearly that it was not in conformity with the security council, with the UN charter." He also said there could not be credible elections in Iraq next January if the current unrest continued.    His remarks are certain to provoke demands by anti-war Labour MPs at Westminster today for a statement by the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith. The UN weapons inspection team, led by Hans Blix, found little evidence of weapons of mass destruction, but this is the first time that Mr Annan has been so outspoken in his criticism of the grounds for going to war.    The Foreign Office last night sought to play down Mr Annan's comments, saying: "The Attorney General made the Government's position on the legal basis about the use of military force clear at the time."    However, both Robin Cook, the former Foreign Secretary, and Clare Short, the ex-Secretary of State for International Development, resigned from the Cabinet over the war, challenged the legality of the war and Lord Goldsmith's ruling.    There has been continuing doubt about the legality of the war. Ms Short has claimed that the chiefs of staff of the armed forces were reluctant to go to war until Lord Goldsmith gave a ruling on the eve of battle that there was legal justification for the war.    Lord Goldsmith argued that the threat from weapons of mass destruction was one of the reasons for justifying action under UN resolution 1441. However, the Iraq Survey Group is expected to confirm that no evidence of WMD has been found.    Elizabeth Wilmshurst, the number two in the Foreign Office legal team, resigned in protest at the case for attacking Iraq in a pre-emptive strike, a week before the war began. It has also been claimed that the Foreign Office fears that its legal justification for the war on Iraq could be open to legal challenge as a result of the ruling in the International Court of Justice against the construction of Israel's security wall.    Mr Annan's question over the Iraq elections could prove more damaging for the US and the UK alliance. The Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told a private meeting of Labour MPs this week that the purpose of the attacks by insurgents in Iraq was to prevent elections taking place. He said the stakes were high because a peaceful democratic Iraq would be a model for the Middle East.    Mr Annan said last month that UN staff returning to Iraq after two suicide bomb attacks last October would have to rely on US-led multinational forces for their protection. The small team led by Ashraf Jehangir Qazi of Pakistan is due to arrive in Baghdad on 22 September with the UN election team.    Mr Straw told the MPs attempts were made to get non-multinational force countries to provide security for the team but, apart from Canada, that was unsuccessful. Mr Straw said the failure to close the borders to insurgents after the war was the major failing of the post war period.    Meanwhile, the US sought yesterday to defend the two helicopter pilots who fired seven rockets into a crowd in Baghdad on Sunday, killing 13 people and wounding 41, saying they had come under "well-aimed ground fire". This is different from the first statement by the US military claiming that they opened fire with rockets to prevent a Bradley fighting vehicle which had been hit by a bomb from being looted of arms and ammunition.    The US account of the incident in which Mazen al-Tomeizi, a Palestinian television producer working for al-Arabiya satellite channel was killed, was contradicted by the film taken by his cameraman at the moment the rocket struck. There is no sound of firing from the crowd in the moments before the helicopters attacked.    The US military's accounts of incidents in which it claims to have targeted insurgents but only civilians have died are frequently discredited by Arab television pictures of the incident, which US officers apparently do not watch before issuing statements. At the weekend the US claimed to have hit insurgents in a precision raid in Fallujah while Iraqis were watching pictures on television of an ambulance attacked from the air in which a driver, a paramedic and five patients died.    The war in Iraq continues to intensify, with a sharp increase in the overall death rate. Three headless bodies were discovered yesterday on a road north of Baghdad and appeared from tattoos to be Iraqis whose hands were tied behind their backs. While insurgents have often beheaded foreign hostages in their fight against the government and coalition forces, it is not a tactic usually used against Iraqis.    In Ramadi, west of Baghdad, there was an upsurge of fighting in which 10 people were killed, including two women.    Meanwhile, the US has dashed Iraqi hopes that money would at last be invested in the country's crumbling infrastructure and no longer spent on arms and security services as under Saddam Hussein. The State Department has announced that it is switching $3.4bn of US funds from water and power projects. Most of the money will be reallocated to boosting security and oil output.    Iraqis had expected that 18 months after the invasion they would get continuous electricity supplies. Instead, many districts in Baghdad get only 14 hours a day. Polluted water is one of the chief killers of children but even in an important city such as Basra only 18 per cent of the supply is clean.    Marc Grossman, the US under-secretary of state for political affairs, said earlier in the week that $1.8bn of the diverted money would go to recruit 35,000 Iraqi police officers, 16,000 border guards and 20 Iraqi national guard brigades.    Friday, September 17, 2004    "U.S. allies argue war was legal", Agence France-Presse    LONDON: U.S. allies defended the legal basis for the invasion of Iraq and their military roles there Thursday after Secretary General Kofi Annan of the United Nations reignited the debate over its legitimacy.    The governments of Britain, Australia, Poland, Bulgaria and Japan - which have supported the U.S.-led war by deploying combat troops or humanitarian assistance to Iraq - insisted that international law justified the war.    Though there was no UN resolution explicitly backing the 2003 invasion, the United States and its allies say the action was justified because Saddam Hussein had failed to comply with previous resolutions requiring him to disarm.    In an interview Wednesday with the BBC, Annan said the invaders had needed permission from the United Nations Security Council. From the point of view of the UN charter, "it was illegal," Annan said.    Since the Gulf crisis in 1990-1991, the Security Council had adopted a number of resolutions requiring Baghdad to abandon, in cooperation with UN inspectors, its programs for acquiring weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles.    The last resolution was adopted in November 2002, when UN inspectors re-entered Iraq after a four-year hiatus, warning Baghdad of "serious consequences" if the country were found to be in breach of earlier resolutions.    Annan, referring to the tense diplomatic build-up to the Iraq invasion, said that it had been "up to the Security Council to approve or determine what those consequences should be."    Britain's trade and industry secretary, Patricia Hewitt, said in response, "We spelled out at the time our reasons for believing the conflict in Iraq was indeed lawful and why we believed it was necessary to uphold those UN resolutions."    Hewitt, whose government sent thousands of troops to Iraq for the invasion and has kept them there, conceded on BBC radio that international lawyers disagreed about the war's legality.    In Sydney, Prime Minister John Howard of Australia not only rejected Annan's remarks but criticized the United Nations as a "paralyzed" body, incapable of acting on major crises, such as the current one in Sudan's Darfur region.    Howard was one of President George W. Bush's strongest supporters in the Iraq invasion, and Australia still has several hundred military personnel in Iraq. The invasion was "entirely valid," according to legal experts in Australia, and under UN resolutions, Howard said.    Howard, who is struggling to win a fourth term in Australia's Oct. 9 general election, has been accused of misleading the public over the reasons for going to war and on other issues.    In a statement in Warsaw, Poland's foreign ministry's spokesman, Boguslaw Majewski, said the "decisions taken by the international community had legal basis." In deploying 2,500 troops of its own to post-invasion Iraq, Poland "acted in line with the Polish constitution by referring to UN Security Council Resolution 1441 of Nov. 8, 2002," he said.    "The use of force against Iraq was also justified by two previous resolutions," those of 1990 and 1991, he said.    In Sofia, a Bulgarian foreign ministry representative, Guergana Grantcharova, also cited previous resolutions as support for the war. Bulgaria has nearly 500 troops in Iraq.    Grantcharova also said UN Resolution 687 still applied. By calling for "all necessary means" to restore international peace, that resolution opened the way for the 1991 Gulf war to end Iraq's occupation of Kuwait.    In Tokyo, Hiroyuki Hosoda, Japan's chief cabinet secretary and main spokesman, told reporters that Annan's remarks had been "unclear" and that Japanese officials would make inquiries about "his real meaning."    Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has been one of the most vocal supporters of the Iraq invasion, despite widespread objections from the general public in Japan.    After the invasion, Tokyo sent troops to Iraq in December on a non-combat, humanitarian mission, Japan's first military deployment since World War II in a country in which fighting was under way.    In The Hague, Iraq's visiting interim president, Ghazi al-Yawar, dodged questions about the legitimacy of the war, saying Annan was an "honorable guy."    In his interview with the BBC World Service on Wednesday, Annan also said that the wave of violence engulfing Iraq puts in doubt the national elections scheduled for January. There could not be "credible elections if the security conditions continue as they are now," he said.    The UN charter allows nations to take military action with Security Council approval as an explicit enforcement action, such as during the Korean War and the 1991 Gulf War. But in 2003, the United States dropped an attempt to get a Security Council resolution approving the invasion when it became apparent it would not pass.    "I hope we do not see another Iraq-type operation for a long time - without UN approval and much broader support from the international community," Annan said.    September 18, 2004    "Ignore international law at your own peril". (The Daily Star: Editorial)    Wise indeed was the statement Friday by French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier that, "We have always considered that it's international law that constitutes the framework for any action, notably against terrorism or for stability in the world."    Merci beaucoup, Monsieur Barnier. If the world hopes to turn around the current trajectory toward greater violence and terror, and move instead toward peace and stability, the lynchpin of any such movement must be a universal, ironclad commitment to the rule of law as the organizing principle of relations among nations. So it is right that France backs UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's earlier description of the U.S.-led war on Iraq as "illegal." Annan had said in a BBC radio interview Wednesday that the U.S. had failed to seek a needed second resolution before invading Iraq in March 2003. "I've indicated that it was not in conformity with the UN charter from our point of view, and from the charter point of view it was illegal," he said.    This critically important issue should be debated long and loud, so that short-term problems such as we have in Iraq do not recur often, and long-term global peace and security might be promoted through a more universal understanding of the spirit and letter of international law. Washington has responded to the illegal war allegations by claiming it considered that a previous UN resolution passed four months before the war gave it sufficient authority to attack, because Iraq had refused to surrender suspected weapons of mass destruction. The last 18 months of searching in post-Baathist Iraq have turned up no such weapons. So not only was the U.S.-led war illegal, it was also premised on wrong information at best, and a deceptive lie at worst.    If all states were to act as the U.S., Great Britain and others did in waging war on Iraq, the world would be a violent mess - which is more or less what it has become with the explosion of terrorism. Lawlessness begets lawlessness. One of the consequences of strong states unilaterally overriding the rule of law is the phenomenon of counter-lawlessness in the form of bin Laden-style terror. Our objective collectively must be a more comprehensive, universal commitment to the rule of law, by the U.S. and U.K., Israel and Iran, all the Arab states, and anyone else who claims to be a member of the community of civilized nations. Annan and Barnier do well to remind us of this. Visit the related web page
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