One Vote Away From 2nd Resolution

CNN | Wednesday, March 12, 2003 Posted: 9:42 AM EST (1442 GMT)

[maquiladora]

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Bush administration believes that it is one vote shy of having nine of 15 votes needed on a U.N. Security Council resolution that sets a Monday deadline for Iraqi compliance, a senior U.S. State Department official said, and officials are focusing diplomatic energies on Mexico and Chile.

President Bush has spent much of the last week on the telephone, lobbying council members to support the resolution.

"Bush and [British Prime Minister Tony] Blair are attempting to do whatever it takes to get the Latins to commit," the official told CNN's Andrea Koppel.

Blair told members of the House of Commons on Wednesday that the council was considering a series of benchmarks that Iraq would have to meet to prove it was disarming -- a step that Chile and Mexico previously suggested.

The State Department official also said the United States is confident it has the support of the three African members of the Security Council -- Cameroon, Guinea and Angola -- despite a visit this week by French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin to secure their opposition to the resolution.

In addition, U.S. and Pakistani officials said Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf can be counted on for his support when a vote happens this week.

That leaves Mexico and Chile as holdouts, the State Department official said. To secure these votes, the United States, Great Britain and Spain have teamed up to work all the angles. On Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell held a three-way conference call with his allied counterparts as they coordinated strategies.

Nevertheless, Russia and France have threatened to veto the resolution. Nine council votes are needed to pass the resolution, but a veto by any of the five permanent members would defeat it. Britain, France, Russia, China and the United States are permanent members.

[steveegg]

Shhh, be very, very quiet. BTW, the media is in Kuwait.

[jongaltsr]

UN tie our hands

[ken5050]

Mom, have you considered that we're pirposely allowing the date for the start of action in Iraq to slip a few days becuase we have to prepare a few things that pertain to North Korea.....

[Gritty]

Let's see.

President Bush started this UN process last September. At the time, he said it was "weeks, not months". Well, now that has morphed into "months, not years"!

Enough of this charade. All this has accomplished is the emboldening of our enemies and a cementing of opposition in "the world" and "peace" movements - not to mention our own 5th Column, the Democrat Party.

It's well past time to launch this war! Otherwise, forget about it, bring the troops back home, give the government to the Dumpocratsand the country to the Islamics. Then burn all copies of the Constitution. We won't need it any more where we'll end up.

Enough already! ENOUGH!!

[knak]

Soon? I've been there all week. LOL

[Tamzee]

Thanks so much for the heads up about Prime Minister Koizumi... that is most reassuring! While old allies have fallen away, new ones have come charging forward :-)

[Sal]

Remember that the only army that Mexico ever defeated was the French.

This would be a good PR point to be made in both Mexico and the US. Cinco de Mayo and all that...

[Sal]

Remember that the only army that Mexico ever defeated was the French.

This would be a good PR point to be made in both Mexico and the US. Cinco de Mayo and all that...

[k2blader]

Bump!

[Mr. Mojo]

"Bush and [British Prime Minister Tony] Blair are attempting to do whatever it takes to get the Latins [Mexico and Chile] to commit," the official told CNN

Translation: Amnesty for illegal aliens.

[lawgirl]

"Bush and [British Prime Minister Tony] Blair are attempting to do whatever it takes to get the Latins to commit," the official told CNN's Andrea Koppel.

I hate the thought of us begging and bribing our way into a second Resolution that we don't need to act.

[Semper Paratus]

: Amnesty for illegal aliens.

How about mass deportations for a no vote?

[Mr. Mojo]

That would be fantastic, but as you know, extremely unlikely (to understate the matter).

[HumanaeVitae]

The best resolution to this is: getting a majority vote on the Security council, and then convincing the Russians to abstain. Let the Frogs veto it themselves. That's the best of all worlds. We have a majority vote, and the French, being typically worthless, veto it themselves.

Moral cover for the war, moral cover to get out of the U.N. What could be better?

[Wil H]

One Vote Away From 2nd Resolution ..

2nd Resolution ??????????

It's the EIGHTEENTH you MORONS !

The First Resolution (687) - at the end of the Gulf War in 1991 - gave Hussein 15 days to unconditionally disarm or the Cease Fire was recinded

That was over 4000 days ago, and the UN STILL want to give him 25 days............

What UTTER MORONS !!

Iraq is in breach of 687 - there is no Cease Fire therefore "between Iraq and Kuwait and the Member States cooperating with Kuwait in accordance with resolution 678" ( Para I.33 of Resolution 687)

Therefore we should continue our action from 1991 and complete the task of defeating Hussein, citing 687 AND 1441 as UN authorisation to do so.

[NYFriend]

"The first benchmark is just silly beyond all imagination. But the real problem with "benchmarks" is that meeting these benchmarks is a matter of interpretation (as is everything in the U.N.) and potentially a matter of yet another vote to decide which interpretation to accept..."

US Veto power on that vote, but we would never get to it.

The "2nd Reso." passes, France, Russia and/or China veto, The US declares that a majority of the the UN SC agrees that Iraq is in material breech and has not provided for any means to correct that breech. The US must act in its absence. Hence, US and friends can begin operations in Iraq, and the UN is shown to be irrelevent.

[Wild Irish Rogue]

Remember-you can't spell eunuch without "UN"!!

[heyhey]

Iran to receive Russian uranium in May







Part of Iran's Boushehr nuclear power plant, at the city of Bushehr, 750 miles (1,200 kilometers) southwest of the capital Tehran, Tuesday March 11, 2003. (AP)





BUSHEHR, Iran - Iran's first nuclear reactor, part of a program which Washington says is geared to making nuclear arms, will receive its first shipment of enriched uranium from Russia in May, Iranian officials said on Tuesday.

The Russian-built reactor near the southwestern Gulf port Bushehr is scheduled to start up in the second half of 2004, officials from Iran's Atomic Energy Organization told reporters during an organized press trip to the plant.

"The fuel for Bushehr has been packed and 90 tons of fuel is ready to be shipped. The fuel will be shipped to the site in May 2003," said Asadollah Sabouri, deputy head of the atomic energy organization

Washington turned up the volume of its concern about Iran's nuclear ambitions last month after the Islamic Republic announced advanced plans to build a host of other nuclear facilities to process and enrich uranium from its own mines.

"It's hard to get a view into exactly what their motivations are, but very clearly they are pursuing nuclear weapons," U.S. National Security spokesman Sean McCormack said on Monday.

Officials in Iran, which U.S. President George W. Bush has branded part of an "axis of evil" with Iraq and North Korea, stressed that the enriched uranium for Boushehr could not be used in nuclear weapons and all spent fuel from the 1000 MW reactor would be returned to Russia.

"We get three percent enriched uranium from Russia as fuel, and we should send back the waste fuel after keeping it for one year in Iran under special conditions," said Abbas Sedqkerdar, head of nuclear security at Bushehr.

"Enriched uranium of more than 90 percent is needed for nuclear weapons, but enriched uranium of three percent is needed for fuel," he said during a tour of the facility which is surrounded by at least 10 manned anti-aircraft batteries and protected by armed guards.

RUSSIAN SUPPORT

Iran insists its efforts to control the uranium fuel cycle are aimed at giving it independence from foreign suppliers as it strives to produce 6,000 MW of electricity from atomic reactors by 2022 to meet booming demand from its 65 million population.

Tehran received support on Tuesday from visiting Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, who has had to fend off stiff pressure from Washington to halt Russian cooperation with Iran's nuclear program.

"Iran has no plans to produce nuclear military projects, this is a fundamental truth," Ivanov said through an interpreter at a news conference in Tehran.

Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi stressed Iran was cooperating fully with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

"We have nothing to hide, everything is transparent. The Americans are just looking for pretexts," he said.

Russia and Iran are currently studying the feasibility of building a second reactor. A second unit is half-built at Bushehr, but a decision may be taken to build the next reactor at another site in Boushehr or somewhere else.

"We have started assessment of the three options. We will announce the result in the next four or five months, but the best option is not necessarily to finish the half-completed unit," Sabouri said.

Washington's concern has shifted in recent weeks to focus on a gas centrifuge uranium enrichment plant being built in the central town of Natanz which IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei described as "sophisticated" during a visit to Iran last month.

Sabouri flatly denied a report in Time magazine that Iran had violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty by introducing some uranium gas into the centrifuges at Natanz.

He said a uranium conversion plant in the central city of Isfahan would be inaugurated in two to three months but Natanz would not be operational until an unspecified later date.

While reporters were given an extensive tour of the Bushehr plant, officials stopped photographers and TV crews from filming inside the facility.

[heyhey]

Monday, 23 September, 2002, 10:05 GMT 11:05 UK
UK 'sells' bomb material to Iran


DTI is accused of approving controversial exports

British officials have approved the export of key components needed to make nuclear weapons to Iran and other countries known to be developing such weapons.
An investigation by BBC Radio 4 programme File on Four will disclose that the Department of Trade and Industry allowed a quantity of the metal, Beryllium, to be sold to Iran last year.

That metal is needed to make nuclear bombs.

Britain has had an arms embargo to Iran since 1993 and has signed up to an international protocol which bans the sale of Beryllium to named countries, including Iran.

MP's concerns

Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, Menzies Campbell, who has been alerted to the BBC programme's material, is said to be extremely alarmed.

Beryllium is a metal with a limited number of high-tech uses in civilian industry, but is mostly used in defence applications and is a vital component in a nuclear bomb.

The programme has also interviewed a leading nuclear weapons expert in the UK who says that the Beryllium and other items which the DTI has licensed to Iran add up to a shopping list for a nuclear weapons programme.

The UK has an arms embargo against Iran, but not a trade embargo.


Export control weaknesses

The programme highlights the weaknesses in the UK's new export control system, which was set up to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

It will reveal that Iranian procurement agents have been working in the UK to get sensitive material back to Iran, and that Pakistan has also been successful in procuring material for its nuclear programme from here.

It is also likely to cause concern among Britain's allies.

President Bush named Iran as part of an "axis of evil" accusing the Iranian regime of sponsoring terrorism.