- PARIS/BAGHDAD (Reuters)
- The United States fired a warning shot Tuesday across the bows of France,
the leading critic of its Iraq policy, saying it would view any French
veto of a new U.N. resolution authorizing force as "very unfriendly."
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- The U.S. ambassador in Paris issued the warning after
France said it and Germany opposed what it called a shift toward "a
logic of war" and circulated a rival proposal that would give U.N.
weapons inspectors at least four months to scour Iraq.
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- Even as he spoke, other members of the decision-making
U.N. Security Council added their voices to the chorus of skepticism over
the resolution, clouding Washington's hopes of winning the nine votes needed
to pass it by mid-March.
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- Russia has backed the French proposal as has fellow veto-wielding
China, with some reservations. Beijing said it saw no need for a new resolution
and believed diplomatic energies should focus on forcing Baghdad to disarm
without war.
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- "Obviously, all delegations said they will study
the draft, which also has a rather rambling preamble," Russia's U.N.
envoy Sergei Lavrov told Russian television.
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- "But few share the conclusion contained in this
resolution -- that Iraq has wasted its chance. Most importantly, that conclusion
does not stem from the assessments repeatedly presented to the Security
Council by the inspectors themselves."
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- Syria, the only Arab country on the 15-member council,
said it would vote against while Angola, Cameroon and Pakistan said they
had yet to decide what to do.
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- Pakistan, which faces unrest from Islamic militants if
it votes for war against Iraq, may abstain, diplomats said.
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- Washington, London and Madrid submitted the draft resolution
to the polarized council Monday. It declared that Iraq had squandered its
"final opportunity" to disarm.
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- TWO WEEKS TO CONCENTRATE MINDS
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- British Foreign Minister Jack Straw said the resolution
would not be put up for a vote for around two weeks, to allow time to "concentrate
the minds" of Security Council members and offer Iraq a last chance
to comply.
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- The U.S. ambassador in Paris, Howard Leach, said he hoped
France would agree the United Nations had to take action.
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- "I hope there won't be a veto because a veto would
be very unfriendly and we would not look favorably on that," he told
LCI television, according to a French translation of his remarks in English.
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- No vote is expected until after chief weapons inspector
Hans Blix reports to the council again, probably on March 7, at a meeting
expected to be attended by foreign ministers.
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- A spokeswoman for the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, the International
Atomic Energy Agency, said a planned report by its head had been advanced
a month to coincide with Blix's report.
-
- In a boost for Washington, Ankara, which has dragged
its feet for weeks on an urgent U.S. request to set up a "northern
front" from Turkey against Iraq, said a motion on allowing U.S. troops
to deploy could be presented to parliament within hours.
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- But Turkey's deputy prime minister said it was unlikely
parliament would discuss the motion before Wednesday.
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- Saddam's top scientific adviser said Iraq was still considering
a U.N. order to destroy its al-Samoud missiles by March 1, despite a U.S.
television report the Iraqi leader had indicated he would keep the weapons.
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- "It is still under consideration," General
Amer al-Saadi told reporters when asked about the U.N. demand to destroy
the missiles which the U.N. says have a longer than permitted range.
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- The White House had said the case for war had been strengthened
by the comments which CBS television said had been made in a rare interview
it had with Saddam.
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- "Iraq is allowed to prepare proper missiles and
we are committed to that," Saddam was quoted as saying. "We do
not have missiles that go beyond the proscribed range."
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- CONCESSIONS "DRIBBLE" FROM IRAQ -- BRITAIN
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- Straw said Saddam appeared to be behaving true to form.
"This is absolutely typical of the way Saddam behaves," he said.
"What he does is dribble out concessions, first of all refusing inspections
and then in the light of pressure accepting them."
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- President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza
Rice, pledged Monday that the United States would try to turn around war
opponents France, Russia and China.
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- "We and the British and the Spanish and the others
will have an all-out diplomatic effort to talk to various parties about
the logic of this resolution and hopefully to bring people around to vote
for it," she told reporters in Washington.
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- She said the United States wanted a decision from the
Security Council one way or the other in the days immediately after Blix's
March 7 report.
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- The crucial votes now belong to Angola, Cameroon, Guinea,
Pakistan, Mexico and Chile. All had favored the French position of more
inspections but now are studiously neutral as U.S. and other officials
approach their leaders.
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- To the frustration of U.S. officials, neighbor Mexico
is proving the most difficult to persuade, with a visit by Spanish Prime
Minister Jose Maria Aznar last week yielding no results.
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- Tuesday, Blix completes two days of talks with his 16-member
advisory board, called a College of Commissioners.
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- He has given them 30 to 40 "clusters" of "unresolved
disarmament questions" and asked the commissioners to place them in
order of priority.
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- Canada would like the council to turn those into "benchmarks"
Iraq should complete by mid-March or April.
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