- Even as the United States withdrew the resolution from
the UN, taking away from Russia the risky burden of a vote, Moscow continued
to press for a peaceful resolution Monday and called U.S. plans for military
action illegal and a mistake.
-
- President Vladimir Putin broke more than two weeks of
public silence on the issue earlier Monday, saying war in Iraq would be
a mistake that threatened global security. Then, after the U.S. announcement,
Putin spoke with French President Jacques Chirac by telephone to once again
stress the need for a peaceful resolution to the crisis, the Kremlin press
service said.
-
- "We are in favor of solving the problem exclusively
by peaceful means," Putin said in televised remarks before the U.S.
decision.
-
- "Any other development would be a mistake fraught
with the toughest consequences, leading to victims and the destabilization
of the international situation as a whole," Putin said in a speech
to Chechen leaders.
-
- Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov slammed the U.S. decision
as running counter to international law.
-
- "We believe the use of force against Iraq, especially
with reference to previous resolutions of the UN Security Council, has
no grounds, including legal grounds," Ivanov was quoted by Interfax
as saying.
-
- The United States has argued that existing resolutions
dating from 1991 give it a legal mandate to use force to disarm Saddam
Hussein. But Ivanov said Monday that UN Resolution 1441, which was passed
in November, contains a clause requiring members of the Security Council
to gather immediately to ensure Iraq complies with demands to disarm.
-
- "Resolution 1441, to which so many references are
made, does not give anyone the right to use force automatically,"
he said.
-
- An emergency session of foreign ministers has been scheduled
for Wednesday, and Russia's ambassador to the UN, Sergei Lavrov, said that
chances of finding a political solution were not "dead" yet,
Interfax reported.
-
- However, it appeared unlikely that the United States
would be swayed off its course for war. Instead, analysts said, the U.S.
decision to withdraw the resolution means Moscow no longer has to risk
open confrontation with Washington by going head to head in a UN vote.
-
- This has allowed Russia to save face by not having to
risk antagonizing the United States over a veto, or France and Germany
over an abstention.
-
- "This would have been a very difficult choice,"
said Alexander Pikayev of the Moscow Carnegie Center.
-
- "Nobody wanted to openly argue with each other,"
said Ivan Safranchuk, director of the Moscow office of the Center for Defense
Information. "Now we are in a situation that is mutually acceptable
for the U.S. and Russia. Russia can maintain a stance of negative neutrality,
and the U.S. can go ahead."
-
- One of the reasons that Washington didn't push for a
resolution was that the Bush administration didn't want "to put Russian
into a corner," said John Reppert, executive director for research
at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
-
- Reppert said he believed that President George W. Bush
and Putin had reached a tacit agreement to that effect during their recent
telephone conversations, in which Putin "was far less adamant"
than his foreign minister, Ivanov.
-
- He said he did not expect Russia's verbal opposition
to war -- as expressed by Ivanov -- to have any substantial negative impact
on U.S.-Russian relations.
-
- Independent State Duma Deputy Vladimir Ryzhkov called
the U.S. decision a "risky move" that created a "very dangerous
precedent allowing the U.S. to launch military attacks without the clear
sanction of the UN.
-
- "The first time this happened was over Kosovo, but
then they said it was the last time. Now it's happening all over again.
This is extremely dangerous," Ryzhkov said in a telephone interview.
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