Straw outlines Iraq power transfer

Security situation in Iraq 'worse than anticipated'

The needs of the Iraqi people and not an "arbitrary timetable" must govern how power is transferred in Iraq, UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has told the United Nations.

In his speech to the Security Council in New York on Thursday, Mr Straw said he hoped the UN would be able to agree a resolution on the future government of Iraq.

In the wake of the council's rifts over the Iraq war, the foreign secretary defended the decision to invade - saying it had upheld the authority of the UN and sent the right message to dictators.

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Earlier, Mr Straw said he remained hopeful weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq, despite a Bush administration source alleging none had yet been uncovered.

The UN on Thursday announced it was cutting back its operations in Iraq because of the deteriorating security situation.

In his speech Mr Straw he acknowledged there were "formidable challenges" on the security front.

In a unity call after the pre-war splits, he said: "Whatever the arguments of the Spring, we have to come together for a common purpose."

The coalition would stay in Iraq "as long, but only as long, as it is necessary to meet our clear responsibilities and to restore sovereignty to the Iraqi people as quickly as we can in on orderly manner", he said.

Guiding principles

The minister laid down three central principles which should govern the transfer of power to the Iraqi people.

• Shifting power had to done according to the "realities on the ground", especially the security situation

• Iraqi institutions had to be robust enough to take on new responsibilities

• Iraq's interim government's use of executive powers had to meet with principles of "good governance", involving Iraqi representative authorities

"In other words, the timetable should be driven by the needs of the Iraqi people and their capacity progressively to assume democratic control, rather than by fixing arbitrary deadlines," he said.

Mr Straw also delivered a stout defence of the war.

"The authority of the United Nations was at stake. Having given Saddam Hussein's regime a 'final opportunity' to comply with the UN, what would have happened if we had simply turned away?

"Would the world be a safer place today? Would Iraq be a better place today? Would the United Nations be a stronger institution today?

"The answer to all each of those questions is 'no''."

Teams of UN weapons inspectors were sent to Iraq before the war

Mr Straw also used the speech to argue there were "no alternatives" to the Middle East roadmap for peace.

And he said the UN's counter-terrorism committee had to be given more support for its work.

With proliferation of weapons "one of the greatest threats" the world faced, it was also time for the Security Council itself to address the issue.

Pointing to the threats of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism, Mr Straw added: "We do not have the luxury simply of rejecting unilateralism, while proposing no multilateral means of confronting these threats."

Choices ahead

Earlier, Mr Straw told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that just because it had been difficult to obtain physical evidence of Iraqi banned weapons "does not mean the evidence is not there".

He admitted the security situation in Iraq "was worse than we anticipated" and disclosed that "a range of options" other than military intervention had been considered by the government leading up to war.

The foreign secretary was speaking after a source told Andrew Neil, of BBC Two's Daily Politics show, that the Iraq Survey Group, tasked with looking for WMD, had failed to find even "minute amounts of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons material".

Downing Street branded the story "speculation about an unfinished draft of an interim report".

Mr Straw said while he had not seen this report, he had seen "various abstracts" and "summaries", and he urged people to await its publication.