A legal minefield for Iraq's occupiers [View All]

[ze_dscherman]

The deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein will provide a welcome morale-boost for the Anglo-US forces in Iraq. It has become all too clear in recent weeks, as casualties have mounted and budgets escalated, that America and Britain gravely underestimated the task awaiting them in post-war Iraq. What the occupying powers may not yet fully appreciate, however, is the extent of their long-term liability under international law.

Because they rejected a United Nations-supervised administration of post-Hussein Iraq, the US and Britain needlessly shoulder most of the legal responsibility for the success or failure of the administration and reconstruction of Iraq. No wonder other nations and groupings, such as India, Pakistan and Nato, have rejected Washington's appeal for troops. Why risk the liabilities of a military occupation under current conditions, especially when a simple Security Council mandate could trump occupation law, with all its attendant burdens?

SNIP

In the last half-century no country requiring such radical transformation has been placed under military occupation law instead of a UN mandate or trusteeship. No conquering military power has volunteered formally to embrace occupation law so boldly and with such enormous risk. And never in recent times has an occupation occurred that was so predictable for so long and yet so poorly planned for.

More more read (calling for a new UN resolution): http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1058868094232&p=1012571727092