By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 1, 2003; Page A13

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 30 -- Secretary General Kofi Annan, who last week ordered the withdrawal of most U.N. personnel from Iraq, would be willing to consider having the agency resume its political role there if security improves and the United States speeds up the timetable for handing over greater power to Iraqis, according to senior U.N. officials.

Annan is urging the United States and other key Security Council members to support a plan that would turn over power to a provisional Iraqi government, backed by a U.S.-led multinational force, within three to five months, while moving more deliberately to draft a new constitution and hold elections, senior U.N. officials said.

The initiative reflects mounting concern by Annan that the U.S. plan to keep political control until the Iraqis have cleared several political hurdles, including elections by the end of 2004, will fuel greater resentment toward the United States and its military allies.

The Bush administration, which plans to introduce a resolution in the Security Council later this week calling for a broader U.N. role in Iraq and more foreign military and financial support for reconstruction, has opposed the immediate establishment of a provisional government. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said today that "the full transfer of authority depends" on the Iraqis' capacity to produce "a constitution, a ratification process, an election."

"Our job is to support them as they go through this process of establishing their constitution, their elected authority, and to ensure that at the end of that process, we're ready to transfer authority to them for full exercise of Iraqi sovereignty," he said.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said last week that he favored the adoption of a new constitution within six months as the first step toward full sovereignty for Iraq.

Hoshyar Zebari, the acting foreign minister in the U.S.-sponsored Iraqi Governing Council, said in a telephone interview from Washington that Iraqis are already pressing ahead with efforts to establish a constitutional process. "I think we have convergence of interests with the coalition. We need to do this step by step," he said.

The U.N. chief's proposal, which is modeled loosely on the Afghan transitional government established after the U.S. overthrow of the Taliban, would require an intensive diplomatic effort to set up a broader provisional government that would include former members of deposed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's Baath Party and Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, an influential Shiite cleric.

"The Iraqis deserve at least what you have given the Afghans; that is, a provisional sovereign government," said Ghassan Salame, a scholar and former Lebanese minister of culture who is acting as a senior adviser to Annan, in an interview.

Salame said the United States's decision to dismantle the Iraqi army and exclude Baath Party members from the country's political life after the war had "alienated" a substantial segment of Iraqi society and provided many Iraqis with a motive to join the armed resistance.

"You need to bring them back into the political process, you need to tell them that at some time in the future they can compete like any others in the political process," he said. "The secretary general . . . wants more people in the government." If they are unwilling to participate, he added, "let them refuse to join."

The U.N. chief said in an interview published in the Sunday Times of London that the continuing U.S. occupation has become a dangerous catalyst for the resistance. "The longer they stay on as an occupation force, the greater the opposition," he said.

Annan said establishing a new transitional government could serve as a basis for a resumption of U.N. participation in the political process. "This provisional government would have the responsibility of drawing up a constitution and arranging elections with U.N. help," he said.

Salame said the establishment of a provisional government would make it easier to attract international troops and financial donors to help restore security and normalcy to Iraq. "The Turks, the Pakistanis and others do not like to be considered as part of an occupation force," he said.