EDITORIAL
Call for more U.N. effort in Iraq hopeful

In the wake of the deadly bomb attack on U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, the Bush administration has returned to the United Nations with a renewed plea for greater international involvement in the rebuilding of Iraq.

If that request is based on the realization that only a true international effort will succeed, then this is a most positive step for Iraq and the Middle East.

If it is simply an effort to use understandable outrage over the U.N. bombing to secure greater international financial and military support without diluting U.S. control on the ground in Iraq, the effort is bound to fail.

In fact, it may simply encourage the more cynical critics of the United States to further block reconstruction.

Commentators have noted that many nations, including some Arab countries as well as India, France and Germany, have made it clear they would commit money and troops to reconstruction only under U.N. control.

At the moment, that doesn't seem likely. At the United Nations, Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States is willing to see some adjustments made to emphasize the role of the U.N. in Iraq. But he was clear that the United States is unwilling to cede direct control to anyone.

It is time now for the Bush administration to acknowledge in deed as well as words that rebuilding a secure and democratic Iraq is not just in the interest of the United States, but rather of the entire world. That suggests a far more intense U.N. involvement than has been the case.

If the U.N. mission bombing has opened the door to that possibility, then we can console ourselves that at least a small measure of good has come from this tragedy.