It is too early to tell whether Saddam Hussein was killed in Monday's U.S. "bunker-buster" B-1 attack on a Baghdad residence where, according to intellgence sources, the Iraqi dictator and his lieutenants were meeting. In fact, it is too early to take a victory in Iraq for granted.

But as coalition forces continue to mop up in Baghdad and other cities, it is not too early to consider how a post-Saddam Iraq should be governed. That was the prime topic at Tuesday's summit between President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The two coalition leaders met to hash out differences in their post-Saddam visions - namely, the role of the United Nations in reconstructing Iraq - and to work out a carefully worded, unified stance.

That stance boiled down to a vague two-word phrase: a "vital role" for the United Nations. The implicit three-word qualifier: "but very limited." Bush, still smarting from his pre-war diplomatic roughing-up at the hands of the Security Council, wants as little U.N. involvement as possible, while Blair has publicly endorsed a strong U.N. hand in running a post-war Iraq. Of course, Blair's stance may have been largely for domestic consumption by a British populace that tends to favor the internationalist approach.

Not surprisingly, the "vital role" appears to be more on Bush's terms: The U.N. should do the key humanitarian work and help "suggest" names of those to lead an interim government. That rejects Secretary-General Kofi Annan's assertion that only U.N. control can bring legitimacy to the process, and echoes the advice of experts such as former secretary of state Henry Kissinger: Concentrate on the U.N.'s agencies and bypass the Security Council snakepit.

This is as it should be. As a humanitarian force, the U.N. has accomplished much good. As a political force, it has often bungled badly. Allowing various nations to pursue their own interests through a U.N. administration would invite all sorts of mischief. U.N. guidance of a transitional government, as some observers have pointed out, could actually delay rather than hasten a transfer of power to Iraqis by embroiling the transition in what Blair called "endless diplomatic wrangles."

And the real goal, as Bush and Blair stressed, is to quickly transfer power to the Iraqi people, not the coalition or the United Nations. They announced steps to establish an interim authority of Iraqis that will serve until the population can choose its own, permanent government.

"The key is that Iraq in the end should be governed by the Iraqi people," Blair said. "Our forces will not stay in Iraq a day longer than is necessary." Blair and Bush are sending out the right message at the right time.