Friday, Feb 14, 2003
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By Sridhar Krishnaswami
It is not clear now if the British Foreign Secretary and the U.S. Secretary of State will also be attending the crucial meeting. Indications from Washington and here are that Colin Powell will also be attending. The top American envoy to the world body, John Negroponte, has said that a final decision on Gen. Powell attending the Friday session has not been made but "in all probability, he will plan to attend". The Foreign Minister of Germany is also expected to be here. At a Congressional panel, Gen. Powell indicated that he might be present in New York on Friday, saying he planned to ask the Foreign Ministers of France and Germany if they were trying to get Iraq "off the hook." "That is the question I will put to them on Friday," he remarked, once again stressing that the issue before the Council was that of Iraqi disarmament and compliance and not more inspectors. "More inspectors aren't the issue. Dr. Blix hasn't asked for more inspectors," Gen. Powell told a Committee of the House of Representatives. "We are reaching a moment of truth with respect to the relevance of the United Nations Security Council to impose its will on a nation like Iraq... And we are reaching a moment of truth as to whether or not this matter will be resolved peacefully or will be resolved by military conflict," the senior Cabinet official said. The U.S. is watching with keen interest how the situation unfolds on Friday when the top U.N. official in charge of weapons inspections gives his second report to the Council. In his January 27 report, Dr. Blix was sharply critical of Iraq over its obligations on disarmament — that while Baghdad was quite forthcoming on the process, there was little to show for by way of substance. France is pushing for an agenda that would vastly expand and strengthen the weapons inspections process, an idea rightaway dismissed by the U.S. and Britain. The French "offensive" at the Council has been by way of a position paper that stresses targeted and intrusive inspections, stepped up aerial surveillance, mobile teams to check goods entering Iraq and tripling the number of inspectors, currently around 110. The French idea has many takers within the 15-member Security Council. "It is important to push the Iraqis up against a wall and not leave them any way out regarding the questions they must answer and on which really active cooperation is expected," the French have maintained. The response from the U.S. — which has been quite wary of the so-called last-minute games of Saddam Hussein — has been along expected lines. "We believe that Iraq has simply failed in every respect to cooperate sincerely with the inspection process. So, adding a few inspectors is not, in our view, going to have much meaning if you don't have that essential ingredient, which is Iraqi compliance," remarked Mr. Negroponte here. The showdown between the U.S. and Britain on the one hand and Russia, France and China on the other is expected to begin almost as soon as Dr. Blix submits his report. Britain or the U.S. is expected to immediately introduce a resolution calling for the use of force to disarm Iraq, the language of which is already being worked on. "I think it's fair to say that there are conversations under way about the language. It still remains somewhat early in U.N. time, but it won't be early in U.N. time for very long," was the remark of the White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer.
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