Arabia News - 09/16/98
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The United States said Monday it would ask the U.N. Security Council to take further steps against Iraq if Baghdad followed through on a threat to suspend the activities of all
U.N. weapons inspectors.
''This would constitute yet another flagrant violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions and a direct challenge to the authority of the council. In that event, the council would have to consider further action,'' spokesman James Rubin told a daily news briefing.
For the moment, however, Washington has asked key allies on the council to try to persuade Baghdad through diplomatic channels to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors.
The Iraqi parliament Monday recommended that the country's leadership suspend all the activities of U.N. weapons inspectors unless the Security Council annulled a decision to end a review of trade sanctions on Iraq.
In a unanimous vote, Iraqi deputies called on the Security Council to cancel a resolution it adopted last Wednesday suspending regular 60-day reviews of sanctions growing out of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in
August 1990.
At an extraordinary session called to debate the council's decision, the 250-seat Iraqi National Assembly (parliament) stopped short, however, of urging an immediate end to cooperation with U.N. weapons
inspectors.
Rubin said Secretary of State Madeleine Albright discussed Iraq at the weekend with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the foreign ministers of Russia, France, Britain and Sweden.
The first three nations are permanent members of the Security Council, along with the United States and China. Sweden currently holds the council's rotating chairmanship.
There was no sign of any action in the council. Annan called the five permanent members and Sweden to a meeting to discuss a ''comprehensive review,'' on U.N. policy in Iraq, which the council included in its
Sept. 9 resolution suspending the sanctions reviews. But diplomats said no agreement had been reached.
Albright's message to the ministers was that if Iraq ended all involvement with the U.N. inspectors, this ''would be a ratcheting up by Iraq of its confrontation with the council and a flouting of the will of the council and ... we would need to consider further action,'' Rubin said.
The foreign ministers ''made clear they agreed with the substance of the American position and would try to communicate the foolishness of the Iraqi position to the Iraqis,'' he said.
He said in the first instance, it was up to the security council to respond but the United States had not ruled out any options against Iraq, including military action.
Scott Ritter, a longtime member of the U.N. inspection team, recently accused the United States of blocking certain inspections of Iraqi weapon sites and generally weakening in its resolve to confront
Baghdad on this subject. He resigned in protest.
His widely publicized critique put the administration on the defensive and caused Albright last week to hit back at Ritter and other critics, saying Washington remained ready to use force against Baghdad if
necessary.
''We have not taken any option off the table, including military force ... The bottom line is that if Iraq tries to break out of its strategic box, our response will be strong and swift,'' she told American war veterans in New Orleans.
But Albright stressed the need ''to choose your own timing and terrain'' in a fight. U.S. strategy is ''to keep the world spotlight not on us but on (Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's) ongoing failure to meet his obligations,'' she said.
Chief U.N. weapons inspector Richard Butler has come to the defense of the United States in the face of Ritter's criticism, saying, ''I'm aware what U.S. policy is, and it's not accurately described at all by being styled as softening.''
After deploying thousands of extra troops and arms to the Gulf last February and March, the United States came near to war with Iraq, only to find most other countries and even the U.S. Congress either
cool or hostile to the idea.
A face-saving deal between the United Nations and Baghdad, in which Iraq promised to cooperate with U.N. inspectors, defused the situation, only to have Iraq renege on its promise six months later. |
