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U.S. in for tough time on Iraq

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

United Nations feb. 18. The U.N. Security Council gets ready for another session on Iraq from member-States not represented in the Council. The meeting which will begin this evening is expected to go on till Wednesday.

Last Friday, the U.S. was shocked to see the width and depth of criticism of its Iraqi policies and the consensus was that the weapons inspectors must be given additional time to do their job. Today in the Security Council other members are expected to be critical of the U.S. and renew the call for more time for inspections. When this open meeting is out of the way, it is said that the U.S. and Britain will be introducing a resolution on Iraq which could start off on a tough note for the sake of allowing changes to be made over the next several days.

France has said that it is opposed to any resolution calling for the use of force and that it might even exercise its veto if it really came to that. The new resolution is not expected to be voted on before the end of the month.

On March 1, the chief weapons inspectors, Hans Blix and Mohammad ElBaradei, return to report to the Security Council.

In addition to this, the French had proposed for a Ministerial Meeting of the Council meeting on March 14; but the Bush administration has rejected the idea. Officials who have started talking about the "last window'' or the "last diplomatic window'' for Iraq are making the point that what is taking place in the corridors of the United Nations is pretty serious business and for the last time in this current Iraqi crisis.

In fact, one perception is that when the resolution is ready to be put to vote, it would be specific in its language on the expectations from Iraq including a statement that this was the last opportunity to the regime in Baghdad.

What the Bush administration is not interested is in `further' debates in the Security Council that would come after `additional' reports from the weapons inspectors.

Washington, in effect, would be making the determination whether Iraq has started complying with the terms of the resolution — this has to be on the `substance', not process of disarmament, officials have maintained.

According to various reports in the media, the U.S. President, George W Bush, is not about to rush into a war with Iraq and is willing to give diplomacy some more weeks.

Mr. Bush, who met the President of Latvia on Monday, is due to see the NATO Secretary-General on Wednesday before heading off to his ranch this weekend for a summit with the Prime Minister of Spain.

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