[Peace-discuss] NYTimes.com Article: Beyond Iraq, U.N. Is Issue

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Beyond Iraq, U.N. Is Issue

March 8, 2003
By PATRICK E. TYLER 




 

UNITED NATIONS, March 7 - "It is quite clear that the way
in which we resolve this problem will determine not just
the future of Iraq," Russia's foreign minister, Igor S.
Ivanov, told the Security Council today. 

As foreign ministers of the Council's 15 member nations
gathered in New York, on the morning after President Bush
began preparing the American people for war, they seemed to
be fighting for their institution as much as over Iraq. 

Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister, said, "The
Security Council - in fact, we all - face an important
decision, probably a historic turning point." 

History will turn, he implied, on what the Council members
do now, whether they hang together as a world body or
splinter apart in bitter dissent over American war plans in
Iraq. 

No one mentioned it publicly, but some members said they
were also thinking about North Korea. If the Security
Council cannot play the primary authorizing role in Iraq,
it might throw the international system off balance in
trying to unite in preventing the Korean peninsula from
becoming a zone of nuclear threat and competition. 

Then comes Iran, where international concerns about a
secret nuclear weapons program are rising as Tehran's
leaders sharply expand their civilian nuclear industries
with heavy Russian assistance and technology. 

In each case, America has asserted a security interest in
the potential threats. Thus the consequences for how the
Iraq crisis is resolved radiate out in many directions. 

After today's mixed report on Iraqi compliance delivered by
Hans Blix and Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief weapons
inspectors, and after two hours of debate and commentary by
the foreign ministers, a sobering realization settled over
the gleaming tower on the East River, some diplomats said. 

Their feeling is that the Americans are certain President
Saddam Hussein will never change his ways or cease being a
threat. For that reason, Washington seems unwilling to
wait, unwilling to negotiate more than a few days'
extension or even to consider that the armies now massing
to strike Iraq are a diplomatic instrument that could still
produce results short of war. 

Many diplomats have heard - and believe - the rumors that
were set off by the visit to the White House by Gen. Tommy
R. Franks, the Middle East commander: Mr. Bush has given
the go-ahead; war is days away, not weeks. If the rumors
are true, they might explain, they say, the tight deadlines
in the offer that Washington and its allies in London and
Madrid made today to extend to March 17 the deadline for
Mr. Hussein to disarm. 

The departure of an Arab League delegation for Baghdad, a
final effort to show the Arab world that its leaders have
done all they could to avert war, was for many diplomats
another long-anticipated piece of the endgame. 

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who has been in battle
mode for a month as an advocate of military action, gave
little hope that any more flexibility on the timing existed
in Washington. 

A European ambassador said that "the vast majority clearly
feels that a decision to go to war" without Security
Council authorization "will have a tremendous impact on the
present multilateral system and in particular on the system
of the United Nation." 

What will happen, he asked, when the 15 nations gather next
week if Washington fails to attract nine votes to pass the
resolution? 

"No one is able to foresee the political repercussions of a
situation where the U.S. goes against the expressed will of
the Security Council if the vote on the resolution fails,"
the ambassador said, referring to a failure to win nine
votes or a veto by Russia, France or China. He added that
"it is an outcome that contains a very high level of risk,"
and could add to the incitement of public opinion in the
Middle East and Europe. 

After the remarkable unity of last November's 15-0 vote on
Resolution 1441, few if any members of the Council expected
to be where they find themselves today. When Mr. Bush
decided to press for one final authorizing resolution,
there seemed little question that America could bend the
Security Council to its will. 

American diplomats reflected the power calculus many
assumed lay beneath the decision making. But other
principles have now been brought into play, along with the
pull of public opinion. 

Initially, American diplomats said they were pressing the
vote out of loyalty to Tony Blair, the British prime
minister and America's strongest ally, who is getting
scourged at home by public opposition to a war. 

But now the prospect of a loss has put British diplomats
into a state of alarm even more intense than that of some
Bush administration officials. 

The British expect that the political price they pay at
home and in relations with the rest of Europe for acting
against the Security Council, if it comes to that, could be
high. 

The focus on war overtook the report by Mr. Blix, who made
the case that he might be able in a matter of months to
complete his mandate and pronounce Iraq either free of
weapons or guilty of irrevocable stonewalling. He implied
that many of the American assertions that Iraq has
continued producing weapons of mass destruction in mobile
or underground facilities have not been backed up with
useful intelligence. He said he continued to look for
underground facilities with sophisticated radar, but had
yet to locate them. 

And Dr. ElBaradei said some of the intelligence assertions
that Iraq has continued to try to develop industries to
support a nuclear weapons program have not borne up under
closer scrutiny. 

Still, inside the Security Council, many diplomats believe
that the most important debate is over whether nations
should simply bow to America's will by joining the
coalition in hopes of influencing the conduct of the war
that Mr. Bush appears poised to unleash. A number of
nations seem determined to hold their ground, diplomats
report, in the belief that no superpower can function in
isolation. 

"Under any circumstances, the United States will have to
come back to the United Nations," the European ambassador
said, explaining that no coalition will be able to shoulder
all of the rebuilding and relief tasks that will arise
under the most optimistic scenarios for war.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/08/international/middleeast/08ASSE.html?ex=1048162867&ei=1&en=403032fefc8fcef7



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