Reality bites for headstrong superpower
By Caroline Overington in New York
February 17 2003
The United States is trying to absorb the reality that much of the world's population, and many of its leading governments, do not support military action to disarm Saddam Hussein.
That clear message - which was delivered with measured calm by many of the world's foreign ministers at a meeting of the United Nations Security Council, and with passion by millions of anti-war protesters around the globe over the weekend - means the Bush Administration must now decide whether to attack Baghdad without UN support, or to delay military action in the hope that the Security Council will eventually back the strike.
British and US diplomats at the UN are likely to start circulating a draft second resolution by the middle of this week, though it may not explicitly call for war.
US officials told the Herald that they were still working on the resolution, but the language may have to be softened following the latest report by the chief UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix.
But the US position received support from an unexpected quarter on Saturday when the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, said the Blix report"did not indicate that tangible progress has been made".
Mr Annan warned Baghdad not to try to take advantage of the split between permanent members of the Security Council, saying: "Iraq should not think that we are in disagreement. A second resolution could [still] be necessary."
France, Russia and China, all permanent members of the Security Council, have said they oppose war and want to give weapons inspectors more time.
The US says Saddam Hussein is a threat and menace who will one day unleash the horror of chemical and biological weapons, either directly, or by supplying them to terrorists.
But the US President, George Bush, was forced to reconsider his preferred strategy for dealing with that threat - to invade Baghdad in "weeks, not months" with the support of the UN - after Dr Blix delivered a cautiously optimistic report to the UN Security Council.
Dr Blix's report said inspectors had achieved "some progress" in the task of peacefully disarming Iraq.
Despite his legendary neutrality, Dr Blix put a definite, perceptible criticism of the US position in the document, and concluded by saying that Iraq could be peacefully disarmed, if only it would co-operate.
His report was followed by a presentation by the UN's chief nuclear weapons expert, Mohammed ElBaradei, who was more positive, saying: "We have, to date, found no evidence of ongoing prohibited nuclear or nuclear-related activities in Iraq."
Strong speeches followed from the foreign ministers of several of the world's leading nations.
The US was surprised by the commanding performance at the UN of the French Foreign Minister, Dominique de Villepin, whose passionate pleas for a peaceful solution to the crisis prompted members of the public gallery to break into applause.
In an effort to counter the impact of Mr Villepin's speech, the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, put his prepared remarks aside, and spoke from the heart, but there was no applause for him.
"Tricks are being played on us," he said, and the world could not wait for one of Saddam's weapons "to show up in one of our cities".
The US was heartened by the fact that none of the permanent members of the Security Council took advantage of the anti-war sentiment surging around the globe to rule out military action.
smh.com.au
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