With last week's almost unanimous U.N. Security Council resolution lifting economic sanctions against Iraq, the stage is set for a multilateral drive to rebuild the war-shattered country. The effort will be led by the occupying powers, the United States and Britain, but the international community will play a role as well, not only in humanitarian assistance and economic reconstruction but also in creating a new Iraqi government.
The resolution, sponsored by the U.S., Britain and Spain, was supported by 14 of the 15 council members. Syria, Iraq's neighbor and the only Arab member of the council, absented itself from the session, though it later gave implicit backing to the vote. Now the rebuilding process in post-Hussein Iraq has what the military campaign in Iraq had failed to win: an explicit mandate of the United Nations.
Plainly, the U.S. and British victory in the war has changed the equation. Although the deep differences that had split the council prior to the war remain, there is now a broad willingness to work together in postwar Iraq. While the countries that had opposed the military action — including France, Russia and Germany — have edged closer to the U.S. and Britain, the occupiers themselves have done their part in finding common ground.