Global Policy Forum

By Julia Preston

Although the Bush administration is not yet assured of the nine votes necessary to win another resolution authorizing war against Iraq, officials see tremendous advantages to having an endorsement from the Security Council, even if it passes with abstentions from France, Russia and China, veto-bearing permanent powers.

American officials were encouraged to consider new Council negotiations as they perceived declining support in Europe for France and Germany, the main Council opponents to war. Several diplomats who attended a luncheon for Security Council envoys immediately after Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's presentation at the United Nations on Wednesday, recounted, for example, a sharp exchange between Dominique de Villepin, the French foreign minister, and Ana Palacio, his counterpart from Spain. Ms. Palacio bluntly rejected a proposal Mr. de Villepin had offered the Council to strengthen weapons inspections by adding more inspectors and creating a United Nations inspections commissioner, the diplomats said. She said that if Iraq was not going to cooperate, France's proposal would only send a message of weakness from the Council.

Many nations, especially in the Arab world, have said that they are ready to support the United States in a war against Iraq but would gain more domestic support if their positions could be backed up with a resolution from the Security Council. "Getting a resolution, even without some of the permanent members, clears up any question for the allies of the legal legitimacy of the operation," a Council diplomat said.

If American and British diplomats can build support for a resolution to use force among the 10 nonpermanent members, they are relatively sure that France, in spite of recent tough talk, will not use its veto to block the measure. "If the French veto, it would sink the Council and it would not stop the war," a European diplomat said, adding that"they would just be excluding themselves" from being players in the Middle East in the wake of the conflict. The French president, Jacques Chirac, told several foreign leaders during telephone calls on Thursday that he continued to reject the idea that war against Iraq was inevitable, according to his spokeswoman.

In Germany, Chancellor Gerhard Schrí¶der, who opposes a war, came under attack from opposition figures who said the chancellor had unnecessarily isolated Germany from its main ally and weakened its ability to play a role in international affairs. In Moscow, President Vladimir V. Putin and Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, issued a joint statement underscoring "the importance of further intensive work with the Iraqi administration" to seek compliance with the United Nations' mandate. Igor S. Ivanov, Russia's foreign minister, said today that Mr. Powell's speech "revealed no persuasive proof that weapons of mass destruction have been produced in Iraq." While force is justified "as an extreme, last measure," he said, "there are no grounds to resort to this in Iraq whatsoever."

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