So it arm-twisted the UN's "dismayingly weak secretary-general" into allowing his organisation to be crudely misused to effect a "transfer of sovereignty" to Iraq by supposedly selecting the candidates for a new regime through Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN envoy to Iraq, and thus legitimising the continuing Anglo-American occupation behind a different facade. The resolution provides for a new provisional government (PG) the members of which, like those for its earlier version i.e. the interim governing council (IGC), consist of the men loyal to America. PG will be, in fact, run by men whom the occupation forces trust.

Although the name of the UN is liberally used, it is not given any meaningful role in the steps leading to the general election. All that the resolution does is to authorise the world body to assist in convening a national conference to select a 100 man consultative council. This body will help the PG in holding the elections while retaining a veto power over its policies. What makes this electoral exercise suspect is that the elections to the transitional assembly will be held by a government that takes order from the US, whose whole effort is directed towards ostensibly transferring the authority to the Iraqis while retaining control in its own hand.

Consequently, the elected government that is to take over after the general election in the winter of 2004-05 will lack legitimacy in the eyes of the Iraqis. While hoping that the PG will be able to accomplish the mission it is charged with, doubts abound as to whether things will go the way the resolution visualises.

The ideal would, however, have been to place Iraq under a UN set-up, with the responsibility for peace lying with an international force coming from neutral countries. Only an election under such a dispensation would have been considered legitimate by the people of Iraq and the world at large. Nevertheless, the new UN resolution is a well-meaning document so far as it seeks to extricate America from the Iraq morass. Still it remains doubtful if the PG will be able to deliver what is expected of it. Because, in the end Washington chose its own men and ignored the UN after the latter provided the required fig leaf.

Even if the UN move at America's behest is already suspect, the question remains whether the UN resolution will at all be acceptable to the Iraqis. Given the anarchy and chaos in occupied Iraq no fool-proof answer can be sought at this juncture. But those who are today resisting the occupation -- like Shia clerics Muqtada al-Sadr and Ayatollah Ali Sistani -- are not in a mood to cooperate with the PG. To them, the PG, like the IGC, consists of men loyal to the US. Its members have been chosen, no doubt by the IGC at the UN's behest, but obviously the PG will be run by men whom America trusty. This could serve to alienate the Iraqi people from them and the signs are all visible. Whether such a team can, with the confidence of the people, help rebuild the country's infrastructure and extend Baghdad's writ over the entire country are big questions.

The elaborate game the US has been playing in its occupation policy could produce little to safeguard its long-term interests. It's handling of Coalition Provisional Authority and its IGC has been in shambles for a year or so. The US desperately needs to find a completely new, different set of clients. That seems to be the secret behind the American insistence or "the charade that is to happen on June 30" when Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN envoy in Iraq is to produce a whole new set of faces to continue the job in a transfer of "sovereignty" that will leave the whole of the occupation forces in place, beyond even the whiff of any control by the new "sovereign" and will also leave in place all the laws enacted by the US, which the new Iraq "sovereign" shall have no authority to alter (nor to change the tenure of the vast array of officials and advisers who will have been appointed by US for many years to come).

Although the UN resolution gives the PG the right to ask the US-led multi-national forces to leave the country, and stipulated that the multinational force will leave Iraq not later than January 30, 2006, the American alacrity on the ground points to a planned long haul in Iraq. Baghdad now has the largest CIA station the world has seen since the fall of Saigon in 1975. The US embassy in Baghdad will have 1300 US officials and at least 1500 Iraqi employees. This embassy will have three officials of ambassadorial rank with John Negroponte who supervised the Contra invasion of Nicaragua, at the helm. It is certainly not for nothing that these US preparations are afoot.

It is a cruel joke that even by the wording of the resolution, which seeks the UN to take up a direct role in policing Iraq and seeks a "peacekeeping force" under the UN flag, US shall retain practically all authority, and the "peacekeeping force" shall be under its command. Kofi Annan, who is in a dilemma, desperately wants to have a piece of the show, but also knows that thanks to the UN's dubious role, particularly with regards to its sanction-related policies in Iraq ravaging its population, the UN also is a no less hated entity in Iraq, and will be attacked by the insurgents with a great relish. So the Secretary General takes an absurd position that the UN personnel will go in only if the occupying power, in essence the US, guarantees security to such personnel.

As a result, Iraq's new regime installed under the guns of US tanks, will be nothing more than a travesty of the "sovereign" entity which the new dispensation is supposed to be. Off-the-shelf CIA asset, Iyad Allawi was made strongman prime minister -- just like Afghanistan's US-installed figurehead Hamid Karzai, another CIA old boy. Iraq's defence and interior ministries also will be run by other US assets. Some 160 senior American advisers will supervise all key ministries. All the US billions currently funding Iraq and overall control of oil revenues will be managed by a special American "advisory and monitoring board." That's a small sample of the "sovereignty" that will follow the political charade of June 30.

Brig ( retd) Hafiz is former DG of BIISS.