The Bush administration has run into such stiff opposition at the United Nations Security Council to its plan for the future government of Iraq that it has pulled back from seeking a quick vote endorsing the proposal and may shelve it altogether, the New York Times quoted US officials as saying Wednesday.

Two weeks after US President George W. Bush appealed at the United Nations for help in securing and reconstructing Iraq, US officials said, his top aides will decide soon whether it is worth the effort to get a UN endorsement.

"We don't want to play this game for a long, long time," said a senior US official, reflecting a certain exasperation with the Security Council.

"This is as much a choice for the Council as it is for us. They can be multilateral and be part of it or they can tell us to do it ourselves," he said.

The new pessimism about winning United Nations support results from the cool reception accorded to the Bush administration's most recent draft on Iraqi self-government, which was supposedly redrawn to take into account suggestions of Security Council members.

What little momentum there was behind the American proposal was deflated after the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, disclosed his own reservations last week, much to the surprise of US officials.

"We really are at a pause right now," said a US official. "A number of countries were leaning in our direction. But after the secretary general's statements, they became leery about supporting something he opposes."
 
(Xinhua News Agency October 9, 2003)