The United States seems to have no way but to return to the United Nations framework for a solution to the Iraq issue, a leading Chinese newspaper said on Monday.

Washington should sincerely invite the United Nations to play a leading role instead of making it merely a "super red-cross" over Iraq, if the United States wants to walk out of the dilemma it is facing in the war-torn country, an article carried by China's People's Daily said.

After all, the UN is the exclusively legitimized body in the world to form a multi-national peacekeeping force to replace the US-British allied troops in Iraq, and only a new Iraqi government formed under the UN mandate can win support and recognition from Iraqi people and the international community, the paper said.

US President George W. Bush received broad applause both in and outside his administration when he announced an end of main military actions in Iraq in May. However, US soldiers in Iraq have since been attacked almost daily, with a death toll of 151 even exceeding the total of American fatalities in combat in the 1991 Gulf War.

General John Abizaid, the new commander of the US Central Command, admitted recently that American troops in Iraq are facing "a classical guerrilla-type campaign" by ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's loyalists and foreign militant groups.

To ease pressure on American troops in Iraq, the US Senate lately unanimously adopted a resolution urging the Bush administration to ask NATO to send troops to Iraq.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who previously spurned Germany and France as the out-dated "old Europe" which Washington cannot rely on for a war on Iraq, has openly invited the two countries to join the peacekeeping mission there.

Nevertheless, countries such as France, Germany and India have all declined the US request, citing an absence of UN authorization. French President Jacques Chirac has made it clear that a French military participation cannot be considered within the current framework.

The current situation in Iraq indicates that it was not wise for the United States to turn a deaf ear to anti-war opinions of its European allies and the international community and unilaterally launched military strikes on Iraq, the People's Daily said, noting that it is facing a hard reality in the Gulf country, including a monthly cost of US$3.9 billion for its troops there.

(Xinhua News Agency July 21, 2003)