U.S. may give up on U.N. war vote

USA Today ^ | Stardate: 0303.14 | John Diamond and Susan Page

[The Wizard]

WASHINGTON -- President Bush (news - web sites) is willing to abandon his demand for a United Nations (news - web sites) vote on Iraq (news - web sites) as the White House prepares an ultimatum that would presage the start of

The planned presidential address from the White House could come within hours of a collapse of deliberations at the United Nations, a senior administration official said Thursday. It would signal an ''end of diplomacy'' and warn journalists, U.N. weapons inspectors and international aid workers that it was time to leave Iraq.

Within days, Bush would follow with a ''start of bombing'' speech when the war begins, the official said in an interview.

[Dirk McQuickly]

Crunch time. The Allies are solidifying. The Axis nations (France, Germany, Russia, and Iraq) will probably meet heads, too.

[kcvl]

UK, US, Spain Considering Summit to Discuss Iraq Strategy
VOA News

14 Mar 2003, 13:22 UTC


President Bush and the British and Spanish prime ministers are considering a three-way summit to discuss diplomatic strategy ahead of a possible U.N. vote on Iraq.

U.S. and British officials say no plans for a summit have been finalized, but the meeting could be held within the next few days. The three countries are struggling to win U.N. Security Council approval of a draft resolution that would set a deadline for Iraq to disarm or face military action. They face stiff opposition.

French President Jacques Chirac says he is ready to work with Britain to explore ways of disarming Iraq, but a spokeswoman says Mr. Chirac continues to reject any talk of an ultimatum. Mr. Chirac made the remarks in a telephone conversation Friday, with Mr. Blair. France has threatened to veto the draft resolution.

Meanwhile, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder told the parliament in Berlin Friday that he is convinced the Iraq crisis can still be solved peacefully. He insisted that U.N. weapons inspectors can produce "sustainable and verifiable disarmament." Diplomats at U.N. headquarters in New York are holding intense discussions on the draft resolution ahead of a possible vote in the next few days. The 15-member Security Council failed to reach agreement on a British compromise proposal after several hours of talks Thursday. The proposal spells out six steps for Iraq to prove it is disarming. In Moscow Friday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Yuri Fedotov said the British proposals are not constructive and do not resolve the key problem, which he says is preventing the use of force against Baghdad.

[The Wizard]

sunday

[kcvl]

WAR LEADERS PLAN SUMMIT

Mar 14 2003

By Naveed Raja


Tony Blair and George Bush will meet in a neutral country this weekend to finalise their plans for war, it was reported today.

Spanish leader Jose Maria Aznar will also attend the meeting if it goes ahead. Spain is backing British and American calls for a second UN resolution to sanction a US-led invasion of Iraq.

The move is the latest development in the march to war and another signal time is short for diplomacy to solve the Gulf crisis.

Meanwhile the Prime Minister spoke with Jacques Chirac for ten minutes by phone today. But the leaders' positions remain as far apart as ever, despite the French leader saying he was prepared to compromise over the crisis.

Downing Street said France re-stated its opposition to a UN resolution for war while the Prime Minister argued for an ultimatum to be delivered to Saddam.

Earlier German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder insisted military action is not inevitable and pleaded for UN weapons inspectors to be given more time.

"We must have the courage to fight for peace as long as there is a scrap of hope that a war can be avoided," he told German MPs.


"Together with our French friends, with Russia and China, we are more than ever convinced that Iraq's disarmament can and must be achieved by peaceful means. It is still possible to solve this conflict peacefully."

At home Chancellor Gordon Brown said he believed a second resolution against Iraq could be passed at the UN, despite widespread opposition to war amongst the international community.

Meanwhile Westminster remained split over the moral and legal justification for launching a devastating blitz on Iraq.

Labour MP Alice Mahon called for the Government to prove war without UN backing was legal.

"These are extremely special circumstances. It is clear the country is split down the middle about whether we should go to war," she said.

"I just think we have a right to know before we commit our servicemen and women into what could be an illegal war."

And shadow attorney general Bill Cash said he had asked the Prime Minister to disclose the legal basis on which military action in Iraq would be justified.

[SamAdams76]

Just a side question here, does anybody know what, if anything, "Axis" stands for? I've read dozens of WW2 books and have never found a clear answer. I understand "Allies" (countries who stick together to fight a common enemy) but always wondered what "Axis" means.

[Grampa Dave]

[CedarDave]

Stalling just a couple more days to see if the new Turkish government can be brought on board. If that doesn't happen this weekend, it won't happen at all and Turkey can be factored out of the equation.

[Dirk McQuickly]

Good question. I don't actually expect any of those countries to meet with Iraq, but in historical perspective, they may as well.

[Go Gordon]

In Moscow Friday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Yuri Fedotov said the British proposals are not constructive and do not resolve the key problem, which he says is preventing the use of force against Baghdad.

Geez, and I thought all those UN resolutions were made to resolve the key problem of Iraq having WMD's. Boy do I feel dumb. Apparently I missed the one about making sure the US doesn't achieve victory in its disarmorment if Iraq.

[kcvl]

U.S. may drop push for U.N. vote

White House reiterates that earlier U.N. resolutions gave authority to wage war in Iraq.

By James Rosen -- Bee Washington Bureau

Published 2:15 a.m. PST Friday, March 14, 2003

UNITED NATIONS -- The United States threatened Thursday to pull the plug on diplomacy and withdraw a draft resolution authorizing use of force against Iraq in the face of a continuing Security Council deadlock and possible defeat of the measure should it come to a vote.
Despite President Bush's insistence last week that Security Council members "show their cards" and declare where they stand on Iraq, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday the United States might not demand a vote on the resolution it introduced last Friday, along with Britain and Spain.

"We are still talking to the members of the council with respect to coalescing around a position that wouldn't draw a veto, but the options remain: Go for a vote and see what members say or not go for a vote," Powell told a House appropriations panel.

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer read to reporters what he described as "a legal sentence" from Bush administration lawyers. It said the Security Council resolutions that required Iraqi disarmament after the 1991 Persian Gulf War give the United States the right to launch war even if no additional measures are passed.

"There is no question, based on both international and domestic law, that the president has that authority," Fleischer said.

The status of the effort to find common ground for the world's major powers and end the Security Council impasse shifted hourly during a confusing day of frantic negotiations in New York, Washington and capitals around the globe.

When the Security Council session ended in the early evening, it was clear that envoys had made little progress in narrowing their governments' differences.

"I can't say that we're much farther along today than we were yesterday, but in diplomacy sometimes you have to give the process a little bit of time to work," said John Negroponte, America's U.N. ambassador.

Munir Akram, Pakistan's envoy, said he and representatives of five other uncommitted Security Council members -- Chile, Mexico, Angola, Guinea and Cameroon -- are trying to devise a compromise resolution.

"It's a difficult situation ... but we are trying to see how we can be helpful," he said. "The purpose is to get peaceful disarmament and to avoid war, and we have to serve both ends."

Diplomats said the Security Council would not vote on any resolution today and would likely meet over the weekend in a bid to break its impasse.

In an unprecedented personal intervention, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan held individual meetings with the ambassadors of each of the 15 countries on the council. The council then began closed-door deliberations, joined by chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, on a British plan to add six disarmament tests to a draft resolution authorizing war if Iraq fails to comply.

The United States and France each sent conflicting signals in their high-stakes brinksmanship over Iraq as the Security Council struggled to find a way to avert war while still compelling Saddam Hussein to disarm.

After Powell's assertion that the United States might abandon the talks, Fleischer said Bush is willing to extend them into next week in the hope of bridging the split. The United States, Britain, Spain and Bulgaria want authorization for imminent war, while France, Russia, Germany, China and Syria want weapons inspections to continue.

"What you are seeing is the president going the last mile on behalf of diplomacy," Fleischer said. "There is an end to that road. The end is coming into sight. Until it is final and the road is traveled, this president is determined to pursue a variety of diplomatic options."

The White House began planning for a possible overseas meeting this weekend of Bush and his two staunchest allies on Iraq, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Spanish Prime Minister José Maria Aznar.

Senior U.S. officials said the meeting, tentatively planned for a neutral nation overseas, would allow the leaders to review final diplomatic and military strategies. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said all three leaders and the host nation had not signed off on the summit Thursday night and there would be no final word on the prospects for a meeting before today.

News of the meeting first surfaced Thursday morning, but officials said planning had stopped, only to confirm hours later that talks had begun again.

The British proposal unveiled Wednesday would require Saddam to make a televised speech admitting past deceit in claiming he had no weapons of mass destruction. It also would require Iraq to allow 30 of its weapons scientists to be interviewed abroad, account for current or past stocks of anthrax, give up mobile biological weapons labs, finish destroying its Al Samoud 2 missiles and explain the purpose of aerial drones that could be used to disperse chemical and biological agents.

Jean-Marc de La Sabliere, the French representative to the United Nations, emerged from the Security Council session Thursday evening to say that the British plan had drawn little support from other member nations.

"We had an in-depth exchange of views," he said. "I think we went to the very core of the problems. Many delegations expressed the view that authorizing force while progress is being made toward our goal, which is to disarm Iraq peacefully, would be wrong, and that a resolution on war was not a good basis for the unity of the council."

Weapons inspectors in Baghdad said Iraq had promised to submit documents today about its VX nerve agent program, followed next week with data on its production and purported disposal of anthrax.

France angered Britain and the United States by rejecting the British plan soon after it was offered.

"We cannot accept the British proposals, as they are based on a logic of war, on a logic of automatic recourse to force," French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said.

With the draft resolution still containing an increasingly unattainable Monday deadline for Iraqi disarmament, de Villepin said the six British tests -- called benchmarks -- set too tight a limit for Baghdad to comply. But after Blair and U.S. officials accused France of being intractable, de Villepin appeared to retreat and leave the door open for compromise.

"We are prepared to move forward in the search for a solution. ... We want a solution. ... Everything must be tried to preserve the unity of the Security Council," he said.

France is open to setting benchmarks for Iraq's disarmament, de Villepin said, though he did not specifically cite the British tests.

After France's initial rejection of the British proposal, Blair complained that the French are "completely intransigent" and said the chance for council passage of a new resolution "is now probably less likely than at any time before," according to Iain Duncan Smith, leader of Britain's opposition Conservative Party, who met with the prime minister.

[The Wizard]

many of the ships have left

[CPL BAUM]

PROGNOSTICATION:

President Bush will address the nation from the Oval Office on Saturday or Sunday evening - prime time. The speech will be short and to the point -

"We have exhausted all diplomatic attempts to resolve this matter peacefully. I cannot and will not allow the safety and security of our nation and of our allies to be threatened by those who would do us harm...by those who develop weapons of mass destruction and demonstrate their callousness and willingness to use them...and by those who maintain close ties with - and provide safehaven to - the enemies of freedom.

It is time for the inspectors to leave.

God bless the United States of America - and God bless her sons and daughters who sacrifice so much to ensure that others may taste the fruits of freedom."

The troops go in on Tuesday. Let's Roll.

[marktuoni]

How public a call do you think will be made for the UN inspectors to leave?

Can we start without asking them to leave?

Doesn't that eliminate the element of surprise?

What about the new reports of Iraq's first strike against our troops in Kuwait?

Wouldn't our calling on inspectors to leave signal Iraq to start?

Man, I'm loaded with freepin' questions this morning!

[Kenton]

Monday's the 17th. Works for me!

I'm flying to Vegas Tuesday morning. This could be interesting. Maybe I better get to the airport real early...

[kcvl]

U.S. Backed Resolution On Iraq Appears Doomed

Friday March 14, 2003 7:35am

United Nations (AP) - A U.S.-backed resolution for war in Iraq was in serious doubt as a majority of Security Council members openly acknowledged they wouldn't support the measure despite weeks of intense negotiations.

With hundreds of thousands of troops poised for action in the Persian Gulf, the White House was forced to consider withdrawing the resolution it filed three weeks ago or calling a vote it seemed certain to lose.

Either way, the United States would be heading into battle, and possibly a protracted occupation of Iraq, without the backing of the United Nations and its member states.

While some council ambassadors pledged to work through the weekend to find a way out of the impasse, others declared the diplomatic process dead.

Amid a swirl of 11th-hour posturing, the White House began planning for a possible summit this weekend between President Bush and his two staunchest council allies, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar.

Senior U.S. officials said the meeting, tentatively planned for a neutral nation overseas, would allow the leaders to review final diplomatic and military strategies.

http://www.ktul.com/news/stories/0303/78721.html

[The Wizard]

I thought that would come after the meeting with England and Spain

[Lucas1]

Gee...what happened to "Show Their Cards" -

I was hoping Bush meant what he said...guess not

[The Wizard]

they did, the game has folded, no takers, we win.

[GraniteStateConservative]

No, we'll give them notice to get out of dodge.

It limits the surprise some, but frankly, there's not much Iraq can do, but brace itself. We won't go in immediately after the announcement for everyone to leave.

If Iraq strikes us, everything is go.

We'd prefer for Huusein to try to start this.

[GraniteStateConservative]

Good analogy.