BY DOUG LORIMER
On March 9, US Secretary of State Colin Powell declared that Washington was "in striking distance" of getting "nine or 10" votes on the UN Security Council to pass a draft resolution giving Iraq until March 17 to "disarm" or face an invasion by 250,000 US, British and Australian troops. By the next day, it had become clear that only four of the 15 council members — the US, Britain, Spain and Bulgaria — were prepared to vote for the resolution.
On his way to a closed council meeting on March 10, John Negroponte, the US ambassador to the UN, told journalists: "I think it is highly unlikely that we'll have a vote on the resolution tomorrow. What I intend to suggest to the other delegates ... [is] that we be prepared to vote on the resolution sometime later this week."
The White House declared that it would demand a vote by the Security Council on the resolution by March 14 at the latest.
US President George Bush has repeatedly stated that Washington intends to carry out an invasion to bring about "regime change" in Iraq, even without UN authorisation. However, the political survival of his main ally, British Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair, could depend on getting a Security Council resolution that Blair can present to the British public and parliament as authorising military action against Iraq.
Britain is the only US ally to make a substantial commitment of military forces to the planned US-led invasion of Iraq, with 45,000 troops deployed in the Persian Gulf.
The latest opinion polls show that only 15% of the British people support military action against Iraq without UN backing. On March 12, a trade union delegation led by Trade Union Congress general secretary-elect Brendan Barber warned Blair that his government might face a massive wave of protest strikes and civil unrest if Britain went to war against Iraq without UN authorisation. "There will be mayhem if he does this without the UN", a union source told the British Guardian.
Massive public opposition to British participation in a US-led war against Iraq has fuelled a growing revolt within the Labour Party against Blair's pro-war position. One cabinet minister, Clare Short, has vowed she will resign if Blair orders British troops to invade Iraq without UN support, and at least four other ministers have said privately they will also quit.
It is widely rumoured in the British press that 200 of the 411 Labour MPs will not vote to commit British troops to war without UN approval, forcing Blair into the politically humiliating position of relying on the votes of the Tory opposition to get parliamentary endorsement for British participation in Washington's invasion of Iraq.
France and Russia
On March 10, both France and Russia — permanent members of the council with veto power — declared they would vote against the resolution.
Later that day, Alexander Vershbow, the US ambassador to Russia, told the Izvestia daily "there will be damage" to US-Russian relations if Moscow vetoes the resolution. According to Associated Press, Vershbow "said the casualties would include expanded energy cooperation and investment, joint work in security and anti-terrorism programs, and partnership in space".
Germany and Syria have already indicated they would vote against the original US-UK resolution.
On March 10, Chinese President Jiang Zemin told Bush by phone that the UN weapons inspections in Iraq should continue and there was "no need for any new resolution". Jiang's remarks appeared to indicate that China would abstain in any vote on the US-British resolution, rather than vote against it and risk endangering its US$80 billion trade surplus with the US.
Later that day, Pakistan's president General Pervez Musharraf phoned Bush to inform him that Islamabad would abstain in any vote on the resolution.
Of the remaining five council members, Cameroon and Guinea were reported to be intending to abstain, while Angola, Chile and Mexico were undecided on whether to vote against or abstain.
Seeking a compromise, on March 11 Cameroon's UN ambassador Martin Belinga-Eboutou suggested giving Iraq 45 days to meet a series of "benchmarks". He stated that such a compromise might be supported by Angola, Chile, Guinea, Mexico and Pakistan, provided that France and Russia did not threaten to veto it. But the proposal was immediately dismissed by the Bush administration. "Any suggestion of 30 days, 45 days is a non-starter", declared White House mouthpiece Ari Fleischer.
However, nervous British officials leapt at Belinga-Eboutou's suggestion. On March 12, British junior foreign minister Mike O'Brien proposed that a new resolution be considered by the Security Council which would require Baghdad to meet a list of six tasks within seven to 10 days of the passage of the resolution.
The next day, France and Russia flatly rejected the British proposal. "We cannot accept the British proposals as they are based on a logic of war, on a logic of an automatic recourse to force", French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin said on French television. Russian deputy foreign minister Yuri Fedotov told Russia's Interfax news agency that Moscow would block any UN resolution containing "ultimatums, which automatically pave the way for war".
With London's proposed "compromise" dead in the water, Blair called Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan-Smith to a meeting at 10 Downing Street on March 13, after which Smith told journalists Blair believed a second resolution was "probably less likely than at any time before".
"If the Americans and British cannot ... get a second resolution, I don't believe it would go to a vote. That was certainly the impression I gained", Duncan-Smith told reporters.
US abandons March 14 vote
Later on March 13, Washington publicly abandoned its earlier vow to seek a March 14 Security Council vote on the original draft resolution giving Iraq until March 17 to "disarm" or face war. "The diplomatic process is underway and it may conclude tomorrow, it may continue into next week", Fleischer told a White House media briefing.
White House officials privately told reporters Bush had decided to give diplomacy more time in order to help Blair. However, this seems implausible given that US war secretary Donald Rumsfeld had earlier let slip that Washington was prepared to go to war even without British participation. "To the extent they [the British] are not able to participate, there are works-around, and they would not be involved", Rumsfeld said on March 11.
It is more likely that Washington did not want to suffer a humiliating diplomatic defeat in the Security Council on the eve of the newly appointed Turkish government's attempt to reverse the March 1 parliamentary refusal to allow the US to deploy 62,000 troops on Iraq's northern border, a deployment that is crucial to Washington's invasion plans.
Speaking before a US congressional committee on March 13, Powell said the US was "not isolated" on its demand for a UN resolution that would pave the way for war. Powell cited Britain, Australia, Bulgaria, Italy, Spain, Japan and eight eastern European countries as supporting Washington's position.
However, since only three of these countries — Britain, Spain and Bulgaria — have a vote on the Security Council, Powell's statement was an admission that, after a week of diplomatic bullying, Washington had still not been able to "persuade" a majority of the 15 council member countries into backing its war resolution.
From Green Left Weekly, March 19, 2003.
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