Putin urges U.N. role in Iraq
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Chirac, Putin and Schroeder are meeting in St Petersburg
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ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking alongside the leaders of France and Germany, has urged Washington to take urgent steps to give the United Nations a role in post-Saddam Iraq.
"I want to stress again that the situation we are confronting in Iraq must be resolved as quickly as possible in accordance with the U.N. charter," he told a joint news conference with French President Jacques Chirac and Germany's Gerhard Schroeder.
"The faster we go along the path as set down by international law, the better it will be. The longer we delay a resolution within the U.N. framework, the more it will look like a colonial situation," he said.
The three leaders, all of whom opposed the U.S.-led war in Iraq, gathered in Russia's second city to press calls for the United Nations to oversee reconstruction after U.S. and British forces secured control over Baghdad and ousted President Saddam Hussein.
Putin pointedly criticized the United States, saying no weapons of mass destruction had yet been found despite Washington's allegations that Baghdad had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.
"The goal of this war -- to disarm Iraq -- has not been achieved. ... We must never mix notions. No one liked the Iraqi regime apart from Saddam Hussein, but this is not the point.
"The point is that the goal (of the war) was only to disarm Iraq," he said.
Copyright 2003
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