A few lines from the front ... an Australian leading seaman writes home from her camp in Qatar Photo: Kate Geraghty
Posted on 03/09/2003 5:42:58 AM PST by MadIvan
The Prime Minister, John Howard, has cleared the way for an announcement on Thursday committing Australia to war in Iraq, if Britain and the United States fail to get backing for a new United Nations resolution.
A few lines from the front ... an Australian leading seaman writes home from her camp in Qatar Photo: Kate Geraghty |
A Thursday announcement by Mr Howard would place Australia in lock-step with the US deadline of March 17 for Saddam Hussein to disarm.
More than 250,000 British and US troops are on standby in the Gulf and several nations, including Russia, have told their citizens to leave Iraq.
Australia has sent 2000 troops to the region, but Mr Howard has not yet decided whether the nation will join a war that is not sanctioned by the UN.
As war approaches, Pentagon officials were reported as saying that Australia might be asked to provide an administrator for one of three regional zones that would be created under US control in postwar Iraq.
The US President, George Bush, spent the weekend on the telephone trying to get the leaders of nations with seats on the Security Council to back the resolution. The French President, Jacques Chirac, who opposes the war, is urging the same leaders to vote against it.
Both are fighting hardest for the votes of three African nations, Cameroon, Guinea and Angola, which could decide the outcome.
The US believes the resolution will pass, but the only members of the council to have publicly supported the war are Britain, Spain and Bulgaria. As well as its own vote, the US will probably be supported by Mexico and Chile. This makes six votes - but nine are needed.
France, Russia, China, Syria and Germany have said they oppose the war, which means the outcome depends on the African nations and Pakistan.
Mr Chirac sent his foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, to Africa this week to try to stop Angola, Cameroon and Guinea from siding with the US.
All three nations are French-speaking, two are former French colonies, and Guinea is 80 per cent Muslim. But all are keen for US aid and investment, and Angola in particular depends entirely on US and Japanese aid to survive. Japan supports the Iraq war.
France insists the proposal will not gain the necessary nine votes, which would mean that France would not have to make good its threat to veto the resolution.
Russia has also threatened to veto the resolution, and its Foreign Minister, Igor Ivanov, warned the US over the weekend that a strike that was not approved by the UN would be illegal under international law.
"If the United States unilaterally begins military action in relation to Iraq, it would violate the UN Charter," Mr Ivanov said.
Mr Howard put his support behind the compromise resolution at the weekend, agreeing that Iraq's President Saddam Hussein should be given a week from today to disarm or face attack.
But it is possible the new resolution will be voted down by the Security Council on Wednesday, opening the way for Mr Bush to order a unilateral invasion of Iraq.
Mr Howard has said he would call cabinet together in those circumstances to decide whether Australia should join the war.
Officials from the Prime Minister's office called the National Press Club on Friday, asking that Mr Howard be booked for a televised address at lunchtime on Thursday. The club is often used by the nation's leaders to issue major announcements.
In New Zealand at the weekend to mark the 20th anniversary of the Closer Economic Relations agreement between that country and Australia, Mr Howard said he would not make a final decision on war until the UN's diplomatic processes had been exhausted.
"Plainly, we have put ourselves in a position to actively participate in the use of force, to actively participate in a US-led action against Iraq," Mr Howard told ABC television yesterday.
"Whether we finally decide to do that is a decision the cabinet will take when we have all of the facts in front of us."
The Opposition foreign affairs spokesman, Kevin Rudd, accused the Government yesterday of manipulating the expulsion of an Iraqi diplomat to suit the timing of a war announcement.
An attache at the Iraqi embassy in Canberra, Helal Ibrahim Aaref, was told on Friday he had until Wednesday to leave the country.
Mr Rudd said the man should have been expelled immediately if the Government believed he was a spy.
"By expelling them in five days' time, we have the drama of an expulsion on the eve of the Prime Minister's address to the nation," Mr Rudd said.
Five cabinet ministers fly today to Jakarta, with two junior ministerial colleagues, for an intergovernmental forum with their Indonesian counterparts on terrorism and trade.
The ministers, including the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, the Attorney-General, Daryl Williams, and the Immigration Minister, Phillip Ruddock, plan to be back in Australia on Wednesday and would be available if a special cabinet meeting on war were to be called for that night.
The Pentagon officials who suggested Australian involvement in administering postwar Iraq outlined a plan to divide the country into northern, central and southern zones to be administered individually under the guidance of an interim authority headed by the chief of the US military central command, General Tommy Franks.
Mr Howard has played down any suggestions that Australia would be involved in a long-term, nation-building exercise in Iraq. He has said Australia would limit its contribution to its traditional role providing humanitarian assistance.
Also at the weekend, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammad ElBaradei, said he and the chief UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, would need "two or three months" to reach a "credible conclusion" on Iraq's weapons program.
Regards, Ivan
This mild contempt has been turned into utter loathing by recent events; I think that Blair knows it in his heart, Howard knows it in his heart, Bush has the freedom to wear this fact on his sleeve - the UN's day is done. If the UN cannot summon up the will to defeat a dictator which defies it, then it is just as dead as the League of Nations was when it failed to deal with Japan's invasion of Manchuria or Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia. We should dump the entire Wilsonian idea of a world body to promote peace, and stick to what we know from historical experience works - a balance of power arrangement - an arrangement which created the longest periods of peace in human history.
Regards, Ivan
Actually, we don't giv a flying f*** about votes.
Deal with it.
Right on!
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