Posted on 02/05/2003 1:44:05 PM PST by kattracks
UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 5 (UPI) -- Ten out of 14 members of the U.N. Security Council Wednesday called for the continuation and strengthening of weapons inspections in Iraq despite U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's dramatic 75-minute expose of Saddam Hussein's secret build-up of weapons of mass destruction.
At the same time, all called on Iraq to cooperate with the U.N. inspectors.
Powell was hoping to rally the members of the 15-member council with what on Monday he called "a straightforward, sober and compelling demonstration that Iraq is deliberately thwarting U.N. weapons inspectors." But the report embellished, with photographs, de-classified reports, and taped telephone intercepts, received the public support of only Britain, Spain, Bulgaria and Chile.
In their statements following Powell's speech, representatives of other permanent and non-permanent members said inspection procedures needed to be tightened and the inspections should continue.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw compared the current U.N. approach to Iraq to the inactivity of world powers between the wars that led to the rise of Hitler and World War II. Straw said the United Nations' predecessor, the League of Nations, "had the same high ideals as the U.N." but failed to take action. As a result, "small evils went unchecked, tyrants were emboldened, then greater evils were unleashed."
The League of Nations was founded in 1919 in the wake of World War I, but was disbanded in 1939, having failed to prevent World War II.
"At each stage, good men said wait; the evil is not big enough to challenge," Straw went on. "Then before our eyes the evil became too big to challenge. ... We owe it to our history as well as to our future not to make the same mistake again."
Britain has strongly backed the Bush administrations' hard line in seeking to disarm what they sight as Saddam Hussein's chemical and biological arsenal. British troops are being deployed along side the massive U.S. military force in the Persian Gulf in preparation for an eventual attack on Iraq.
Straw stopped short of explicitly threatening armed action against a non-compliant Iraq. "Saddam must be left in no doubt as to the serious situation he now faces," he said. "If non-cooperation continues, this Council must meet its responsibilities."
French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin called for the inspections to be strengthened, and outlined procedures for making them more effective. "Why go to war if there still exists an unused space in Resolution 1441?" he asked.
The Security Council's Resolution 1441 of Nov. 8 was the basis for sending weapons inspectors back to Iraq after a four-year hiatus, and called on Iraq's full cooperation.
"With the choice between military intervention and an inspections regime that is inadequate for lack of cooperation on Iraq's part, we must choose to strengthen decisively the means of inspection," Villepin said.
The French foreign minister proposed doubling or tripling the number of inspectors, opening more regional offices, and setting up a clearing house of intelligence information to make it available to the inspectors in real time. He also suggested appointing a permanent U.N. coordinator for disarmament in Iraq, stationed in Baghdad and working under the authority of Hans Blix, the U.N. head of the inspection process.
Villepin said France was offering Mirage IV observer aircraft to boost the technical capability for monitoring and collecting information.
He also called on Saddam Hussein to cooperate actively by surrendering "documents on unresolved disarmament questions, in particular in the biological and chemical domains," and providing the inspectors "with answers to the new elements presented by Colin Powell."
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Ivaov and Syria's permanent representative to the U.N. Mikhail Wehbe were the only two speakers to raise the issue of a second Security Council resolution to gain time and put further pressure on the Iraqi regime. The Bush administration has not said it is opposed to a second resolution, but would want it to be a U.N. ultimatum authorizing an invasion of Iraq if Saddam Hussein did not disarm.
But Ivanov called for "a political settlement." He said Powell's evidence should be handed to the two organizations involved -- the International Atomic Energy Agency, and UNMOVIC, the U.N. Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission -- for verification.
"The activities of the international inspectors in Iraq must be continued," Ivanov said. "They alone can help the Security Council work out and adopt the best possible decisions."
Russia, with China, France, Britain and the United States, are veto-wielding members of the Security Council.
Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan urged Iraq "to adopt a more pro-active approach, make further explanations and clarification as soon as possible and cooperate with the inspection process." He also observed that "it is the universal desire of the international community to see a political settlement to the issue of Iraq within the U.N. framework and avoid any war."
Joschka Fischer, foreign minister of Germany, which currently holds the presidency of the Security Council, called the Saddam Hussein regime "inhuman and brutal," and said there was widespread belief that the Iraqis were hiding weapons of mass destruction, particularly chemical and biological weapons. But "by tightening the inspections, we are creating an opportunity for a peaceful solution," he went on. The United Nations needs "tough, intensive inspections that can guarantee the full, lasting, disarmament of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction."
No, Saddam started it by invading a sovereign nation (Kuwait) in 1990. He aggravated the situation by continuing to doggedly pursue WMD, flaunting UN resolutions and forging alliances with Al Queda and other terrorists.
This will be an immoral war because we are going to wipe out thousands of people based on the miniscule possibility that Hussein is just going to, on a whim, launch an attack on us or our allies.
The danger is not so much a direct attack from Saddam's own Iraq, but a proxy attack facilitated by Iraqi chem/bio weapons, Iraqi-supplied intelligence and training. The possibility, far from being 'miniscule', is more like an inevitability, given Saddam's mentality and record of war-atrocities.
Furthermore, the inevitability of civilian casualties cannot be cited as a reason not to go to war. By your mis-reasoning, Saddam is allowed the widest latitude to develop WMD and do mischief, while the US is held to the strictest standards of tolerance and passivity.
And there will be no 'butchering' of innocents. The US military goes to unprecedented lengths to minimize civilian casualites; and those casualties deserve to be balanced against the countless innocent lives that will be saved by riding Iraq (and the world) of this mass-murdering dictator.
The remainder of your post is mostly mawkish sentimentality about the futility of war -- any war -- and paranoid meanderings about the supposed dangers of our own leadership. These musings only illustrate your own mental confusion and flight from the facts and hardly deserve a response. Suffice it to say that you have not made your case!
I wonder how they'd react to that "intelligence?"
-PJ
This shows how open-minded you are to concrete evidence. What is your opinion of the Al Queda chem/bio training camp in Iraq, overseen by Iraqi intelligence and used to train AQ terrorists for operations all over the world? This is a war on terror, not simply on OBL, or any single person, country or entity. Growing and irrefutable evidence indicates that Iraq, NK, AQ and other countries and terrorist organizations are working hand-in-glove to destabilize western civilization (each for their own unique objectives, true enough). What will you say when this short war is over and ALL the evidence of Saddam's murdering, lying, banned weapons and links to various terrorist organizations is laid out in the glaring light of day? No more wiggle room then. Will you apologize for calling President Bush 'stupid'? Will you get on board and support our efforts, or will you prefer to cant and carp from the sidelines?
I will look forward to that.
What would it take to get you to change your mind?
Given the overwhelming case that has been presented so far, the chance that Saddam is not dangerous enough to require military action is only slightly less probable than that the value of Pi is not between 3.0 and 4.0. However, if there is a distinct lack of actual WMD, facilities and scientists to corroborate what we have been hearing from the Bush team after we remove Saddam, I too will frankly admit I have been deceived.
But I am very skeptical of this sort of thing, like the Gulf of Tonkin, the Maine as an excuse by the government to get the people riled up for war.
This is not an analogous, rush-to-war situation. The press has been, for the most part, antagonistic or at least skeptical, requiring the administration to make a very clear and cogent case, which they have done, imo. Also, this war has been debated for over a year now, in various forums: newspapers, news forums like FR, colleges and universities, talking heads on all major TV networks, and lastly in the halls of Congress. No one can claim they were pressured into acquiescence or that the facts were withheld from them, or that the Congressional resolution was misused beyond its original intent (as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was).
I'll always believe Bush is stupid because he is.
That is a stupid statement.
LOL, no, I was merely remarking on the fact that your opinion is not a very popular one around here. Cheers.
Congratulations. You've learned how to make friends and influence people.
No matter how anyone rationalizes this war through WMD treaty evidence, we are the aggressors. We are the ones who are going to start it.
So, when a criminal has a gun to the head of a hostage and a police sniper takes him out, the police started it?
That's not enough to justify butchering a population in my book.
It is an unfortunate side effect of war that innocent people are killed. But it won't be because the US military is targetting them. It'll be because Saddam uses them as shields. That's how cowards fight.
After all, the Twin Tower attacks, the worst terrorist event in history, were not committed with WMD.
Wide-body jets loaded with fuel that are crashed into buildings full of thousands of innocent people aren't considered weapons of mass destruction in your book? Have you been smoking the drapes?
Two paragraphs into your argument and I can't even bring myself to go on. You really are deluded - and that's not name-calling, it's my opinion of the state of your brain.
Let's take your concept further...
The U.S. should build a giant igloo in the frozen tundra of the Alaskan Arctic and call it the "new" UN facility.
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