Global Policy Forum

By Tom Heneghan

France stepped up the pressure on both Iraq and the United States on Monday, demanding Baghdad destroy its al-Samoud missiles while warning Washington against trying to impose its will on the world. Speaking as the United States prepared a new United Nations resolution to force Iraq to disarm, Paris said it would submit a memorandum on how to boost the arms inspection regime it sees as the best way to neutralise Baghdad's weapons programme.

President Jacques Chirac, the strongest anti-war voice among Washington's Western allies, rejected a second resolution as "neither useful nor necessary", according to his spokeswoman. "The inspectors have demanded the destruction of the al-Samoud missiles. Iraq must meet this demand and destroy them," she said. The United Nations has set a deadline for Iraq to start this process by Saturday. "There is no reason today to interrupt the inspections and go over to another logic that would lead to war," she added.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder also said he saw no need for a second resolution at the moment. In rare comments on foreign affairs, the powerful Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy defended France's position on Iraq, saying it was fair and understood around the world. "It says there cannot be a superpower that runs the world's affairs," he told RTL radio. Sarkozy also left open the option for France to veto a second Security Council resolution on Iraq.

FRANCE SEES PROGRESS IN IRAQ

Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said U.N. arms inspectors were clearly making progress in their bid to disarm Iraq and Baghdad would make a positive step towards disarming if it destroyed the al-Samoud missiles. "Once we have proof there are other programmes in the biological and chemical fields, the same principle should be applied -- information, verification, destruction," he told the daily Le Figaro. "This is the right approach."

"It's striking that the United States today does not seem to take into account the progress noted by (U.N. arms inspectors Hans) Blix and (Mohamed) ElBaradei," he said. Villepin drew a clear line between the U.S. and French approaches to Iraq and argued that a majority of countries on the Security Council wanted the inspections to continue.

Referring to the United States, he said:

"Through Iraq, some think a military intervention can resolve at the same time a crisis of proliferation, part of the terrorism problem and a regional crisis as big as that of the Middle East. So we would resolve a large part of the world's problems like this. "That's not at all the way we see it."

In another swipe at Washington, Villepin said France and the international community agreed the world needed several power centres to handle its crises. "The temptation of a unipolar world, of resorting to force, cannot contribute to stability," he said. "No one country can claim to be able to resolve all the crises by itself."

Villepin said the world did not agree with Washington's plan to replace Iraqi President Saddam Hussein: "The goal the international community has set is the disarmament of Iraq, not regime change or the remodelling of the Middle East."

FRENCH MEMORANDUM

Villepin portrayed the new French memorandum as a follow-up to proposals for tougher inspections he made in response to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation of Washington's case against Iraq at the United Nations on February 5. "We will propose to the Security Council a second memorandum to go beyond tighter inspections and define concrete criteria to facilitate and set benchmarks for disarmament," he said. This would include deadlines and requirements for each stage of inspecting Iraq's arms programmes and a schedule for interviewing scientists involved in them.

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