Posted on 03/12/2003 6:59:49 AM PST by 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.
ANY politician who doesn't co-sponsor legislation to stop any and all foreign aid to the "no" voting countries loses my vote in a hurry. I'm sick of my tax dollars rewarding this kind of "loyalty".
Foxnews reports that Foreign Office Minister Mike O'Brien said that it will happen tomorrow.
The title is misleading. It's not a possible 2nd resolution against Iraq, it's a possible 18th resoultion.
American physicians are having a spine installed.
The UN is proven irrelevant, and America needs to get it on with the enemy.
So many scandals, so few brain cells left.
They want to destroy the UN as it is today, and most especially the existence of a SC and veto capacity. Whatever prestige France supposedly gains from its SC seat and veto is more than offset in its eyes by the USA having the same power....This stands in the way of the many wonderful multilateral "reforms" that the EU/Third World alliance could otherwise inflict upon the world, such as global taxation, forced adherence to all UN treaties and protocols such as the ICC , Kyoto, etc.
In September of 2000 WJC along with most world heads of state signed the Millenniuum Summit charter for global democracy. It was explained away as a mere UN 'wish list', when some protested in the media that it was far more invasive of national sovereignty than is the original UN charter. And nothing has been done to enforce the MS document since its signing.
But suppose France's antics do destroy the current UN, and most especially the SC/veto curb. And suppose as a result the UN re-forms using the MS document as the new charter. What then? The US would have to decide between staying in a UN in which it would be continually outvoted, or leaving the UN entirely, and being declared a 'global outlaw'. The real danger at that point would be if the desire on the part of the EU/Third World alliance at seeing US power curbed is so great that the alliance is willing to destroy the global economy, creating a true global depression:
They might decide to force the US to rejoin the UN and adhere to Kyoto and the ICC, the various antiHate Speech internet measures the EU passed,etc, by an economic embargo against the US , and by demanding we remove our bases on which the US depends for 'global reach'.
Tinfoil? I hope so.
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