-Caveat Lector- Fri 14 Mar 2003 http://www.news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=307872003
White House decisions on a UN vote changing by the hour TIM CORNWELL DEPUTY FOREIGN EDITOR TO VOTE, or not to vote. That was the question facing George Bush’s top advisers yesterday. Whether to face the slings and arrows of the outrageous French in the United Nations Security Council, or to abandon a council vote altogether rather than risk a damaging defeat. In a day of mixed messages and fluctuating fortunes, the decision appeared to differ almost by the hour. One moment, Ari Fleischer, the White House secretary, was hinting at more time for debate; the next Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, was threatening that "the day of reckoning is fast approaching". Britain yesterday reduced its set of six benchmarks for Saddam Hussein to five - as well as hinting on flexibility over a 17 March deadline. The Iraqi leader need not make a televised confession to owning weapons of mass destruction. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said: "If the only issue ... is whether or not he makes a TV broadcast, then we’d happily drop that." The concession, passing up the demand to humiliate as well as disarm the Iraqi leader, was but one of many diplomatic manoeuvres yesterday. But the UK stuck to its demands for a resolution that he "immediately" answer all remaining questions on his arms programmes. That was far too tough for France, which appeared to reject out of hand almost any UN resolution from the US-British camp. As Downing Street heaped its nastiest abuse yet on the folk at the other end of the Channel Tunnel, however, Paris appeared to waiver. Moscow too seemed to hint at compromise - although on what, exactly, was hardly clear. The White House was reported to have hastily prepared, then speedily cancelled, and then denied altogether, as a rumour, a "foreign trip" by President George Bush, presumably to London. Rumour or not, Mr Bush was a no-show at the traditional St Patrick’s Day luncheon on Capitol Hill, calling off his waiting motorcade as he continued frantic telephone diplomacy. He had earlier met the Irish prime minister, Bertie Ahern. Ireland has provided landing facilities for US military aircraft for 40 years, but Mr Ahern is confronting strong anti-war sentiment and Irish citizens have vandalised US military planes. He told Bush: "If there is not a resolution, Ireland cannot engage in support of military action, because we work under the UN resolution." There was little semblance of calm; high on the call list were Mr Blair and the supportive Bulgarian prime minister, Simone Saxcoburggotski. The Bush administration said it was prepared to allow debate on any second resolution to run into early next week, having said all this week it would not. Officials said privately the White House was chiefly interested in granting Tony Blair breathing space to try and ease his political problems at home. "What you’re seeing is the president going the last mile on behalf of diplomacy," said the White House spokesman, Mr Fleischer. "There is an end to that road, and the end is coming into sight." The countdown to war, however, was if anything speeding up, with a sense that hostilities could start almost at once, barring the need to remove aid workers and, most of all, UN inspectors, from Iraq to safety. For days, Mr Bush had publicly promise to bring to the matter to a head in the UN Security Council, win or lose, in a test of who was really prepared to defy the US. But a loss would see his country launching a war, for the first time in post- war history, to which neither the UN nor any other significant international group had given its backing. "We are still talking to members of the council to see what is possible," Mr Powell later told a congressional subcommittee. He said the options on the table included "to go for a vote and not to go for a vote". Mr Blair’s efforts to find a third way between the US and the "axis of weasels" of France, Russia and Germany formed the basis for discussion yesterday. Britain’s UN ambassador, Britain’s working draft for a second resolution had required Saddam to admit on Iraqi national media that he had a concealed arsenal, and had made a "strategic decision" to surrender it. It demanded new laws that made it a crime to manufacture weapons of mass destruction, or fail to co-operate with UN officials, and that he send Iraqi scientists out of the country for interviews, among other measures. But France and Germany said they considered the British proposal to be essentially the same as the first, US-backed resolution. The French foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, told French television: "We cannot accept the British proposals insofar as they are part of a logic of war, a logic of automatic recourse to war." It was not a matter of giving a few more days, he added in a statement, and the British proposals "do not respond to the questions the international community is asking". Mr Straw accused the French of dismissing the British proposal without taking enough time to examine it, and of saying that "whatever the circumstances, France will vote no". That appeared to hit home. Later Mr de Villepin insisted Paris wanted to work for consensus in the Security Council, although on what basis was unclear. Bernd Muetzelburg, national security adviser to the German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, backed that up. The British proposal is "not a real compromise approach" because it still "basically gives an authorisation for war", he said. Russia took a more hesitant line than early in the week. Apparently reflecting concern about potential trouble with the US, the foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, said Moscow is still weighing how to vote on the British compromise. "We are not talking about the vote yet, we are still discussing proposals from different nations, and it is still unclear what resolution we are talking about," he said in Tajikistan. Meanwhile the US remains lukewarm. The UN ambassador, John Negroponte, said he wanted to see how council members reacted before "embracing it in its entirety". In that case, the US would be prepared to accept "a very, very, very brief extension". The race for the swing votes of the undecided six nations on the council seemed to slip into the background yesterday. As London blamed Paris for effectively scaring off the smaller powers, Guinea said yesterday it might abstain. "Guinea may opt for abstention. The United States has already made it clear that an abstention would be tantamount to voting against the resolution," Radio Guinea International declared. This article: http://www.news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=307872003 War with Iraq?: http://www.news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=518 Websites: UNMOVIC http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/ FCO - Policy towards Iraq http://www.fco.gov.uk/servlet/Front?pagename=OpenMarket/Xcelerate/ ShowPage&c=Page&cid=1007029394374 UN News Centre http://www.un.org/News/ UN - Office of the Iraq Programme http://www.un.org/Depts/oip/ US Dept of State - Iraq Update http://usinfo.state.gov/regional/nea/iraq/ Iraqi Presidency http://www.uruklink.net/iraq/ Iraq Watch http://www.iraqwatch.org Forwarded for your information. 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