Saint Petersburg: Berlin and Moscow want the reconstruction of post-war Iraq to be
under UN auspices, Russian President Vladimir Putin said o April 11, during talks
with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
"Moscow and Berlin believe the main task is to urgently return the Iraqi settlement
process to within the framework of the United Nations," the Russian leader said
during a
bilateral meeting in Russia's second city.
"The war (in Iraq) has been going on for more than three weeks. Its results are
clear ad only provoke regret," Putin added, in his first public comment since the
fall of Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein's regime on April 9, when US forces swept into Baghdad.
"Our countries must do everything to preserve the stability of the system of
international law, which is based on the supremacy of the United Nations," Putin
said.
Putin was to host a trilateral summit later with Schroeder and French President
Jacques Chirac aiming to carve out a role for their countries in Iraq through the
United Nations, in the face of sweeping US battlefield gains.
Putin, Chirac and Schroeder have sought a central role for the United Nations in
post-war Iraq, a position that has been treated with open scepticism in Washington,
which wants initial US military control.
