The Envoy.(Vieira de Mello)

On April 9, 2003, when a U.S. Marine tank helped topple the towering statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad's Firdos Square, many officials at the headquarters of the United Nations, in New York, averted their eyes from the celebratory images unfolding on CNN. A few days later, when a wide-shot photograph revealed that relatively few Iraqis had participated in the statue demolition, U.N. employees rapidly disseminated the image through e-mail. "We didn't wish bad things for the Iraqis," a U.N. official recalls. "But we were terrified that if the Bush Administration got away with walking all over international law it would jeopardize everything we stood for."

The Security Council had withheld support for the invasion, and Secretary-General Kofi Annan and U.N. diplomats had warned of the human suffering that it would cause; they were chastened by the ease with which the American-led Coalition had reached Baghdad, and by the relative bloodlessness of the battle. A swift victory, U.N. officials worried, would establish a dangerous precedent, emboldening member states to go to war even in the face of firm international opposition. Annan, speaking with colleagues, lamented the possibly irreparable loss of U.N. relevance.

French, German, and Russian diplomats cared less about the U.N. charter than about their own national interests. Having opposed the war, these countries had severely strained relations with Washington, and the diplomats feared the economic and political consequences. On May 22nd, the same countries on the Security Council which had refused to condone the invasion ahead of time joined the United States in voting for a resolution giving retroactive legitimacy to the occupation. These countries were eager to signal their support for a stable, democratic Iraq; to insure that they were not shut out of economic opportunities there; and to force the Americans to acknowledge that, under international law, they were formal occupiers, not "liberators." They also wanted to try to give the U.N.--which they trusted more than the Americans--a significant role in shaping the new Iraq.

Whatever the Europeans' aims, U.S. diplomats, who were still basking in their apparent victory, largely dictated the terms of Security Council Resolution 1483, offering other countries no say in how Iraq was governed, providing no timetable for departure, and handing the U.N. an ill-defined, subservient role. Although the U.N. resolution technically obliged the occupiers to abide by the Geneva Conventions--which prohibit occupying authorities from exploiting a country's resources or making fundamental changes to its government--the international norms of occupation were superseded. Resolution 1483 effectively granted the Americans and the British the legal authority to choose Iraq's political leaders, to spend its oil revenue, and to transform its legal, political, and economic structures. It also called on other U.N. member states to contribute personnel, equipment, and other resources to the Coalition's effort. For the first time in history, the Security Council was upholding the occupation of one U.N. member state by another. Mona Khalil, a lawyer at headquarters, set up a screen saver on her computer that read "The U.N. Charter has left the building."

Many Iraqis were aghast when they learned of Resolution 1483. A month earlier, Moqtada al-Sadr, the militant Shiite cleric, had been asked, by the Washington Post, whether the Americans were occupiers or liberators. "I don't know their intentions," he said. "Only God does." Sadr and millions of other Iraqis now had their answer: the U.N. resolution confirmed that it was indeed an occupation.

Annan, though aware of Resolution 1483's problems, told colleagues that he was pleased to be "back in the game." Mark Malloch Brown, then the head of the U.N. Development Program, told the Times that the measure was a "very good resolution" because it gave the U.N. a foot in the door. Annan and Malloch Brown knew the challenges of managing postwar transitions--a daunting task even in small countries like East Timor, which the U.N. oversaw between 1999 and 2002--and they were quietly relieved that the Security Council had not asked the U.N. to run Iraq.

Instead, the council had asked for a U.N. Special Representative for Iraq, who would help set up an Iraqi "interim administration." Even this envoy was subservient to the Coalition. He would have a fraction of the powers of Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N. envoy appointed to Afghanistan in 2001, who had helped select that country's first post-Taliban leader. Annan's advisers disagreed about who should fill the Iraq post. Several of them believed that it should be a junior official whose rank would be commensurate with his almost laughably insignificant role. Kieran Prendergast, the U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, asked Annan, "Are the Americans actually going to create a space for us to play a political role, or are they intent on doing everything themselves and just appropriating the U.N. decal?" The British, who still hoped that the U.N. could play a vital role in Iraq, urged Annan to appoint an envoy strong enough to stand up to the Americans. Jeremy Greenstock, the British Ambassador to the U.N., told Annan that the choice was simple: "We are really talking about Sergio."