Support for Bush fading faster than a summer tan:
boston.com support lags; vote put off
Vetoes vowed; compromise on Iraq eyed
By Elizabeth Neuffer and John Donnelly, Globe Staff, 3/11/2003
UNITED NATIONS -- France and Russia yesterday declared that they would veto a US-backed draft resolution setting a March 17th deadline for Iraq to disarm or face war, delaying a UN Security Council vote and sending diplomats back to the bargaining table.
Even without the threatened vetoes, President Bush's high-powered diplomatic campaign -- carried out in phone calls around the globe yesterday -- still failed to muster the nine votes needed for the measure to have passed in a Security Council vote today, as the administration had hoped.
Faced with calls for compromise as well as threats of opposition, the United States and Britain yesterday signaled that they might consider amending the measure. Six council members remain undecided, wary of casting a vote on a measure that could divide -- and possibly irrevocably damage -- the 15-member council.
President Jacques Chirac of France took a stern line yesterday, pledging that France would veto any resolution that leads to war and warning that any US decision to launch war against Iraq without UN consent would ''break up the international coalition against terrorism.''
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan went a step further, saying at a news conference in The Hague that US unilateral action against Iraq would be a violation of the UN Charter.
''The charter is very clear on the circumstance under which force can be used,'' Annan said. ''If the United States and others were to go outside the council to take military action it would not be in conformity with the charter.''
Council members reconvene today for an open-door session on Iraq, called for by non-council members, and how far negotiations will proceed is unclear.
One compromise UN diplomats are considering is adding a series of goals, or ''benchmarks,'' to the draft resolution that Iraq must meet in order to prove it is really disarming, and extending the March 17 deadline the United States and Britain wanted it to meet. That might win over undecided nations, and make the measure palatable to France and Russia.
Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix yesterday gave some momentum to that idea. Blix, exiting a late afternoon Security Council session on Iraq, noted that by next week he will have a report outlining the key remaining disarmament tasks Iraq faces. Some UN diplomats said that report could serve as the basis for setting disarmament goals for Iraq to meet.
''Many members of the council are interested in this'' report, Blix said, ''because they are talking about what would be expected of Iraq to do, and they would like to see what precisely we . . . feel is necessary for Iraq to do.''
Security Council diplomats, meeting behind closed doors for three hours yesterday, spent more time querying Blix about his assessment of Iraq's disarmament than focusing on how to amend the draft UN resolution, put forward last week by the United States, Britain, and Spain.
Afterward, Britain's ambassador to the UN, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, emphasized his government was still debating whether it wanted to amend the draft. But Prime Minister Tony Blair, faced a growing insurrection within his own party yesterday, may be in the mood for compromise.
One of Blair's Cabinet ministers, Clare Short, threatened to quit and nearly a third of his Labor Party lawmakers oppose Blair's support of the US position.
Angola also signaled its interest in compromise. ''We don't want . . . a divided council not capable of acting,'' Ismael Abraao Gaspar Martins, Angola's ambassador, told reporters. ''We think we should not accept that as a given.''
How far the United States, with nearly 300,000 of its troops massed in the region, is willing to yield is unclear. In Washington yesterday, Bush spent much of the day in an urgent round of telephone calls to drum up support, reaching out to Chinese President Jiang Zemin, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, South African President Thabo Mbeki, and Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman.
''We are in the thick of diplomacy,'' said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. But Fleischer also suggested that the White House could agree to some changes to make the UN draft resolution more palatable.
A senior State Department official said early in the day that the administration believed it had the votes of Pakistan, Cameroon, Guinea, and Angola, and was focusing on securing the votes of the two undecided countries in Latin America, Mexico and Chile. Then Pakistan's prime minister said for the first time publicly that his country would not support a war with Iraq. Chile suggested it wanted changes. And France, for the first time baldly stated it would use its veto power, which it holds as one of the five permament members of the Security Council.
In a TV interview, Chirac flatly ruled out any UN resolution that would lead to war, saying France would vote against one ''no matter what the circumstances.''
In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov also said Russia would vote against a resolution which ''contains ultimatum demands that cannot be met.''
Under the terms of the 1945 charter creating the UN, nine of the 15 members of the Security Council must vote in favor of a proposal for it to pass -- a clear, not just a simple, majority.
But a measure can be vetoed by one of the council's five permanent members -- Britain, the United States, France, Russia, and China. Their ''no'' vote becomes a veto when it is cast against a measure that has otherwise passed by at least nine votes.
As it now stands, the United States is assured the support of Britain, Spain, and Bulgaria. Cameroon and Mexico favor, but have not yet embraced, the US position. Germany, Syria, and Pakistan, however, have said they will abstain or vote against the measure. That leaves Chile, Angola, and Guinea to be won over to the US-British position. France, Russia, and China are expected to abstain or vote no.
Both France and the United State worked hard at competing diplomacy yesterday, with French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin traveling to the three undecided African nations in hopes they would not vote for the UN resolution. For his part, US Secretary of State Colin L. Powell worked the phones.
Powell telephoned Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf, and Mexico's foreign minister, Luis Ernesto Derbez. He called Derbez twice in the last two days, said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher. Powell also spoke to Foreign Minister Ana Palacio of Spain.
Neuffer reported from the United Nations and Donnelly from Washington.
This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 3/11/2003.
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