Global Policy Forum

By Julia Preston and Steven R. Weisman

France, offering an alternative to the United States' drive to disarm Iraq by force, circulated a detailed plan today to Security Council nations for extending and strengthening United Nations weapons inspections. With the support of Russia and Germany, France proposed to double and eventually triple the number of inspectors and to increase aerial surveillance flights, building its position in anticipation of a confrontation with the United States at the Council next week.

However, there is no mention in the document of a widely reported plan by France and Germany to send United Nations peacekeepers to bolster the inspections. Diplomats confirmed that no such plan had been considered, and also noted that Iraq had placed conditions on its acceptance of U-2 surveillance flights.

Meanwhile, the European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said in Seoul, South Korea, that its leaders would meet in Brussels on Monday and take up the rift among NATO members over the United States's position on Iraq. Mr. Solana, a former NATO secretary-general, was quoted by the Reuters news agency as saying he was confident the disagreement could be resolved because it was one of timing rather than substance.

In a meeting today in New York, the United States national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, urged Hans Blix, one of the chief weapons inspectors, to come down hard on Iraq in a crucial report he will present to the Council on Friday, administration officials said. She warned him, they added, that time was running short.

Ms. Rice stopped short of setting a deadline for the inspectors to leave but said, "At some point it will become obvious that it's time for them to go," an administration official said. Based on the inspectors' report, the Council will begin a debate next week on whether to continue the inspections or follow the lead of the United States and Britain, declaring that Iraq has failed to cooperate and clearing the way for war.

In the first detailed public discussion of the administration's plans for a postwar Iraq, senior administration officials told Congress today that it could take more than two years for the United States military to hand over control of Iraq's central government to Iraqi leaders. A translation of a letter that Iraqi officials delivered Monday to Mr. Blix and Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief nuclear inspector, showed that Iraq had qualified its acceptance of U-2 and other surveillance flights over Iraq.

The Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammed Aldouri, had maintained that Iraq's acceptance of the flight was unconditional. But the translation from the Arabic, which became available today, showed that Iraq demanded to have "timely notification of each flight, including time and point of entry, speed and call signal that ensures communication with the pilot if necessary."

While United States diplomats pointed to those terms as a clear violation of the guidelines of the inspections, Mr. Blix said today that he wanted more time to study the letter. In it Iraq said it would allow flights by a U-2 plane offered by the United States, and also a Mirage jet offered by France and a Russian Antonov.

Under the Security Council's Resolution 1441, Iraq is required to allow unconditional use of the U-2 aircraft by the inspectors. But one official with the inspections teams said that it was customary, in past years when they used such aircraft to aid inspections, to advise Iraq of a window of time when the aircraft would be flying — sometimes as much as 36 hours long.

As the contending sides at the United Nations worked to maximize their support, France laid out a strategy of aggressive but open-ended inspections intended to stop the Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, from developing secret illegal weapons and to postpone war indefinitely.

French diplomats sent the Council nations what they called a "nonpaper," a document that is not intended to become a Council resolution. The diplomats said they had no plan to offer a resolution to counter anything that the United States and Britain might propose in coming days, because the Council did not need to adopt a new measure to enhance the inspections. "The idea is to make sure that the present system submits the Iraqi authorities to continued pressure," the French document says. "Our approach is based on the need to compel Iraq to cooperate by taking the peaceful approach of intrusive inspections."

France proposed to beef up the United Nations security units that are currently working with the inspectors, so that they permanently post troops at some suspicious sites in Iraq, and help the inspectors to "freeze" sites before they get there. The French plan calls for Mr. Blix and Mr. ElBaradei to appoint a permanent inspections manager to be based in Baghdad. It would further require them to elaborate a complete list of all the tasks that remain to disarm Iraq. "It is important to push the Iraqis up against a wall and not leave them any way out regarding questions which they must answer," the document says.

Ms. Rice and John S. Wolf, assistant secretary for nonproliferation, met for an hour with Mr. Blix at the United States mission here this morning in an unannounced session. Ms. Rice admonished Mr. Blix to be as blunt as possible on Friday in assessing Iraqi noncooperation, an administration official said. Mr. Blix asked Mr. Rice how much time there would be for inspections to go on. "Time is running out," she replied.

Mr. Blix said Iraqi officials had continued to give only mixed results in terms of cooperation. According to one knowledgeable official, he said, "Iraq has done some things, especially on inspections process, but on the key substantive things, nothing suggests they have made the critical choice to cooperate."

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell spoke today to the foreign ministers of nations that are permanent members of the Council to try to break the impasse in NATO over Iraq. They included the British foreign secretary, Jack Straw; the French foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin; and the Russian foreign minister, Igor S. Ivanov. He also spoke with Joschka Fischer, the foreign minister of Germany, which is not a permanent Security Council member, and the United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan.

France, Germany and Belgium have resisted requests first from the United States and then from Turkey for military equipment to protect Turkey in the event of war with Iraq. The Europeans say that approving the request would be tantamount to voting in favor of war with Iraq, something they have been strenuously resisting in the Security Council. The issue has opened a dangerous fissure in the alliance, diplomats say, potentially one of the most damaging in its 54-year history.

Speaking at a Senate Budget Committee session this morning, Mr. Powell said he hoped NATO "will be doing the right thing with respect to Turkey within the next 24 hours." Speaking critically of France, Germany and Belgium, he said: "Three of the European nations in NATO are saying, `Well, let's not do it at this time.' But 16 nations are saying we should do it at this time. And so while we're hearing a lot about the three, let's remember 16 nations, to include of course, Turkey and the United States, have stood up for Turkey."

When asked whether the United States' obduracy on the issue wasn't endangering the alliance, Mr. Powell said the blame was on nations that would ignore Iraq's repeated violations of United Nations resolutions. "We're not breaking up the alliance," he said. "We're just making sure the alliance, both the U.N. alliance and the NATO alliance, deals with this responsibility and remains relevant to the task put before it." "Who is breaking up the alliance?" he asked. "Not the United States. The alliance is breaking itself up because it will not meet its responsibilities."

But Mr. Powell added: "We still are hopeful that a way can be found for the alliance to respond." He said he had been lobbying France, Germany and Belgium "to see if they would not change their position." Mr. Powell said that if war was necessary, "it will be done in a way that will be seen as surgical," with the fewest possible casualties.

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