UNITED NATIONS (U-WIRE) — As United Nations diplomats wrangle over the terms of a new, tough Security Council resolution aimed at forcing Saddam Hussein to disarm, it will be the behind-the-scenes horse-trading — as much as the mandate’s fine print — that will make or break any final UN deal.
Publicly, diplomats remain divided: whether to have one resolution or two, whether to threaten Iraq with military force directly or with unspecified consequences later. Privately, however, what’s also at stake is what concessions Washington is willing to grant to get its allies on board.
China wants assurance that the United States will overlook its actions in Tibet and downplay the importance of Taiwan. Russia has its eye on billions of dollars in as-yet-unrealized oil deals in Iraq, which has the world’s second-largest known oil reserves. And France, which also has vested interests in Iraq’s lucrative oil fields, doesn’t want to give the United States a blank check for military force against Iraq.
“Countries are trying to make it clear — on an initiative on which they have grave misgivings — that Washington has to realize they will accumulate brownie points and be prepared to accommodate them later,” said David Malone, a former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations and president of the International Peace Academy, a New York-based think-tank.
Nowhere in the 15-member Security Council is the trading more fast and furious than among its five permanent members. Each wields a veto that can block any plan.
But if the United States and Britain, spearheading the drive for the new resolution, can capture the votes of the other three permanent members — France, China and Russia — the new United Nations measure is all but guaranteed. Only nine votes are needed for passage, and the other rotating member countries often follow the lead of the permanent five.
Some consensus has emerged: Diplomats appear to agree a new resolution is needed before U.N. weapons inspectors return to Iraq to hunt for Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction. But sharp differences over the wording of the mandate remain.
The United States and Britain favor a measure granting U.N. inspectors wide-ranging powers to seek weapons of mass destruction and threatening “all necessary means” should Iraq fail to comply. France, by contrast, favors two resolutions: one, laying out stricter terms governing U.N. weapons inspection, and a second that would “consider any measure” should Iraq fail to comply.
The French draft also refers to Iraq’s “sovereign and territorial integrity” — a phrase that is anathema to the Americans because it was used by the Iraqis in the past to block access by weapons inspectors to presidential palaces. But it is a phrase that resonates with the Chinese, who are troubled bby the precedent that sanctioning military action against Iraq might create in the absence of a state of war.