FRANCE SAYS IT MAY VETO USE OF FORCE IN IRAQ

Reportaje de Sonni Efron and Maggie Farley, Times Staff Writers en "Los Angeles Times" del 21-1-03

Foreign minister tells U.N. that intervention isn't yet warranted. His remarks highlight a growing divide between the U.S. and its allies.

Con un muy breve comentario al final

Luis Bouza-Brey

UNITED NATIONS -- In a broad challenge to the Bush administration's foreign policy, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said Monday that France would not yet approve the use of force against Iraq and cautioned that U.N. handling of Baghdad would set a precedent for North Korea and the Middle East.

De Villepin spoke moments after U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell warned the United Nations Security Council that it "cannot shrink" from action against Iraq and said the U.N. must enforce its will if it intends to "remain relevant."

"We cannot be shocked into impotence because we are afraid of the difficult choices that are ahead of us," Powell said. He told the council that it must soon come to grips with a regime that he said has continued to develop weapons of mass destruction, threaten its neighbors and trample human rights at home. "However difficult the road ahead may be with respect to Iraq, we must not shrink from the need to travel down that road," Powell said.

But De Villepin countered that there is no current justification for military action and hinted strongly that France would veto a resolution proposing an invasion of Iraq if peaceful alternatives remained.

"As long as you can make progress with the inspectors and get cooperation, there's no point in choosing the worst possible solution — military intervention," he said.

The French remarks, echoed in similar statements by the Chinese and German foreign ministers, highlighted a widening divide between the United States and its allies over what the next steps should be. Of the 14 foreign ministers summoned here for a counter-terrorism meeting, Britain's Jack Straw was the only one to agree with the U.S. that "time is running out."

Most of the others signaled that they favor giving U.N. inspectors more time to complete their disarmament work.

Broadening the issue, De Villepin argued that the handling of the Iraqi crisis would set a "benchmark" for how the international community would deal with other global crises, particularly in North Korea and the Middle East, which he said had been neglected by an Iraq-obsessed administration in Washington.

"The crisis in Iraq is something of a test. These stakes are enormous" because other would-be proliferators will be watching, he said. "If war is the only way to resolve this problem, we are going down a dead end."

With the Iraq crisis deepening, the U.S. and its challengers on the council are hardening their positions while trying to maintain a mantle of unity. Next Monday, the Security Council will hear reports from chief inspectors; two days later, it will discuss how long inspections should continue.

Inspectors have been in Iraq just eight weeks and are becoming more capable of meaningful probes by the day, De Villepin argued. "Active participation by Iraq" is essential, but President Saddam Hussein is nonetheless effectively contained for the moment, he said. "Iraq is not in a position to pursue fresh [weapons] programs even if it wanted to."

Chief weapons inspector Hans Blix and International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Monday upon their return from a trip to Baghdad that their inspections were at "midcourse" and that they would tell the council more time is needed.

They have said previously that Iraq's arms declaration had gaps, that the government violated U.N. resolutions by importing banned weapons parts and that last week's discovery of 12 warheads suitable for chemical weapons suggested other "forgotten" materiel. But a weekend meeting produced encouraging signs, they said: Baghdad had handed over four more warheads, agreed to divulge more scientists' names and documents, and pledged to encourage weapons experts to accept private interviews with inspectors.

"We are both committed to do as much as we can to avoid a war. We still believe war is avoidable," ElBaradei said, "but only if we can prove that Iraq can provide credible assurances to the Security Council that Iraq has been disarmed."

Powell dismissed the Iraqi offers as "more of the same," noting that they were all actions that Baghdad was supposed to have taken long ago. U.S. officials have become clearly frustrated at the prospect that Iraq's partial compliance could leave them in precisely the bureaucratic limbo for which conservatives have always indicted the United Nations.

Although Straw announced that Britain would send a 30,000-member force to the Persian Gulf region within days to join the U.S. forces already in place, he acknowledged that it is important to hear what inspectors have to say next week.

Tang Jiaxuan, the foreign minister from veto-holder China, urged the council to slow the pace, saying that the report due next Monday "is not a full stop of the inspection work but a new beginning."

Tang said that recent discoveries by inspectors showed that their efforts were "proceeding well" and should be allowed to continue.

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said his country rejects war with Iraq because it could destabilize the region and fuel new terrorist attacks. Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder hinted over the weekend that Berlin might vote no or abstain if the Security Council votes on military action against Iraq.

With the majority of the council publicly lined up against quick action, the Bush administration has been careful to reserve the option to use force without U.N. consent, bolstered by "a coalition of the willing." Russian Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov explicitly cautioned against such a move, telling the council, "We must be careful not to take unilateral action."

Diplomats caution that skirting the U.N. would make it harder for U.S. officials to bring other issues — such as North Korea's nuclear ambitions — to the council when they want to share the burden.

North Korea wants to deal only with the United States, but Powell said Monday that the IAEA should refer the problem to the Security Council.

"We're looking for a diplomatic solution, and there are some interesting elements that have come forward," Powell said.

North Korea has said that it would view adoption of economic sanctions as tantamount to war, and U.S. officials have said they are not considering sanctions. More likely, America and its allies would seek a condemnation of North Korea's nuclear activities from the largest possible number of nations. The goal would be to demonstrate to the North that pursuing its nuclear program would mean not just standing up against the United States but incurring the wrath of the international community.

However, with both the Iraq and North Korea crises potentially pending at the Security Council, the U.S. could face the sticky problem of persuading allies that there is nothing discordant in adopting differing approaches to the two potential proliferators. The administration says that it hopes for a diplomatic solution to the North Korea crisis while arguing that a decade of Iraqi defiance of the United Nations demands a more muscular, and potentially military, response.

"The war on terrorism, North Korea and Iraq all interplay," said Nancy Soderberg, a former National Security Council official, noting that the United States would have a hard time asking for international consensus on North Korea if it was to argue that it did not need such a consensus before proceeding with military action on Iraq.

In addition to expressing reservations about the use of force against Iraq, De Villepin said France would not support efforts to lure Hussein into exile.

"Let us not be diverted from our objective," he said, arguing that the international community had agreed that the goal is to disarm Iraq, not oust Hussein. Other ambassadors called the exile option "unrealistic."

For the United States to say it would consider immunity from war crimes prosecution for Hussein if he went into exile, as Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld argued Sunday, would fly in the face of the U.S. and British positions throughout the late 1990s, when the two allies tried without success to persuade the U.N. Security Council to set up an international criminal tribunal to try Hussein for his criminal atrocities, said David Scheffer, a former ambassador at large for war crimes issues under President Clinton.

Even if Hussein did accept a U.S. offer of amnesty — an outcome seen as unlikely — France and Britain, as well as Germany and Spain, which are serving on the Security Council this year, could find it very difficult to support such a move, Scheffer said. All have strongly supported the formation of a criminal court for the purpose of trying just such figures as Hussein.

Muy breve comentario final

Luis Bouza-Brey

En una situación tan delicada, en la que hay que medir muy afinadamente la información, las estrategias y tácticas y los tiempos de la acción, el comportamiento de Francia parece no únicamente torpe, sino, francamente, estúpido. Con "aliados" como el gobierno francés actual  ya pueden los EEUU aguzar el ingenio: tendrán que enfrentarse al enemigo y perder tiempo y recursos en convencer a unos "aliados" tan benéficos.

Uno no entiende muy bien cuál es el juego de Francia, como no sea el de dejarse llevar por la opinión pública y los intereses más inmediatos de sus compañías mercantiles. O quizá intentar recuperar un papel en la política internacional y europea que últimamente había perdido. Pero el costo puede ser tan elevado como destruir las Naciones  Unidas o debilitar el liderazgo norteamericano. Ambas cosas altamente dañinas.

El artículo de DICKEY  en "Newsweek" que incorporo a la página de internacional hoy realiza un análisis muy lúcido de la situación política con respecto a Irak.