By Judy Aita
Washington File United Nations Correspondent

United Nations -- U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel said January 8 that the United Nations should have a "very significant" presence and involvement in Iraq in order to bring international legitimacy to the rebuilding and restructuring of the country.

Hagel, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Select Committee on Intelligence, met with Secretary General Kofi Annan at U.N. headquarters to discuss Iraq, Afghanistan, and other U.N. issues.

Speaking with journalists after the meeting, Hagel said his longtime position has been that "the United Nations has a very vital, critical role to play in Iraq. We cannot stabilize Iraq and help the Iraqi people get to a position where they can govern themselves, defend themselves without a very significant United Nations presence and involvement."

"The United Nations brings a certain international legitimacy to our efforts," the senator said. "It takes away from the rebuilding of Iraq the perception that this is a United States program, a United States plan. That must be dispelled so that the Iraqi people know that the objective here is a free and secure and stable Iraq governed by the Iraqi people."

The United Nations is the only world body that can bring that international legitimacy, he said, as well as "an additional amount of resources, governments and people and help and support."

The U.N. is the "only organization in the world that can, in fact, put on the ground programs and processes that will lead to eventual elections and in a transparent, fair way so the Iraq people have confidence in the results," Hagel said.

The senator said that the planned January 19th meeting of the secretary general, the Iraqi leadership and the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) on the U.N. role in Iraq will be very important.

"The United Nations, under the leadership of the secretary general, must have some defined role and purpose," he said.

While not giving any details on what the U.N. role might be, Hagel said that he believed Annan has very specific ideas about U.N. participation and when that participation could begin.

The United States has not announced who will be representing Washington or the CPA at the meeting with the secretary general. But Hagel said that in a meeting with Secretary of State Colin Powell the secretary "made clear that the United States is placing a great deal of importance on that meeting."

Hagel also said that Afghanistan and the Middle East peace process cannot be given less attention than Iraq.

"Iraq, the Middle East peace process, and Afghanistan all are woven into the same fabric and the focus has to be on all those areas ... in our overall effort to help stabilize Central Asia, the Middle East and deal with the new threats of the 21st Century -- terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction," the senator said.