By Andrew Buncombe in Washington, Tony Paterson in Munich and Stephen Castle in Brussels
10 February 2003
America poured scorn on a new plan for Iraq proposed by France and Germany as a way of averting war last night, deepening the rift with its reluctant European allies.
Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, dismissed proposals for tripling the number of inspectors, backed by armed UN peace-keepers, as a "distraction, not a solution".
The Americans are already furious with France and Germany for blocking Nato plans to protect Turkey in the event of war – a decision described as "shameful" by Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary. General Powell urged the two countries to think again after Belgium said that it would join the Franco-German opposition to the proposed moves.
The 19 Nato countries have until this morning to register objections to proposals to deploy surveillance aircraft and defensive missiles to help to defend Turkey from any retaliatory strike by Iraq.
As the transatlantic rift deepened, UN weapons inspectors said they were making good progress in meetings with Iraqi officials and that they saw a "beginning of a change of heart", although they were careful to add that the meetings had not provided a breakthrough. But rather than easing tensions among the big powers on the Security Council, the inspectors' comments could raise them by giving France and Russia the chance to claim that Iraq is now co-operating, and that the threat of war should be lifted.
President George Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was unconvinced. "We have seen this game with Iraq many times before, throughout the Nineties," she said. "When there's enough pressure, the Iraqis try to do just a little bit in order to release the pressure." And Mr Bush said: "It is clear that not only is Saddam Hussein deceiving, he's not disarming."
Undeterred by the hostile American reaction, France and Germany are to present their proposals to the UN Security Council on Friday, when the Council is due to hear the latest report from the leading UN inspectors, Hans Blix and Mohamed al-Baradei.
Britain and America are preparing a fresh UN resolution that would declare Iraq in "further material breach" – a phrase that could be interpreted as justifying war – unless the inspectors are confident that President Saddam Hussein has really decided to co-operate fully.
General Powell, who laid out America's case against Iraq before the Council last week, said: "More inspectors doesn't answer the question and what France has to do and what Germany has to do ... is read [UN resolution] 1441 again."
Britain did not immediately respond to the Franco- German plan. A Foreign Office spokesman said: "Iraq has to change its attitude, and it has to start to co-operate fully. That is what we will be looking for on the report from the inspectors on Friday."
The plan was outlined by Peter Struck, the German Defence Minister, on the fringes of a security conference in Munich at the weekend.
Russia and China have indicated they will support the proposal, which could see a tripling of the number of weapons inspectors, deployment of thousands of UN troops to Iraq, the banning of Iraqi flights anywhere in the country and a clampdown on oil smuggling. According to German sources, it would not automatically require the removal of President Saddam as Iraqi leader.
Pope John Paul II announced that Cardinal Roger Etchegaray would depart for Baghdad today to deliver a personal message to the Iraqi President, urging Iraq to co- operate with the inspectors.
The Franco-German plan will be DOA at the Security Council. Britain and the US would veto it.
What they need to do is not "start" to cooperate, they need to cooperate fully. That means surrender. Now. Perhaps the French can show them how.
Yup. 1441 was the last chance to come clean...not time to begin writing another resolution....the jig is up. (...or as GWB has said, "The Game Is Over!")
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/2720441.stm
Alister Cooke: BBC
Peace for our time.
I promised to lay off topic A - Iraq - until the Security Council makes a
judgement on the inspectors' report and I shall keep that promise.
But I must tell you that throughout the past fortnight I've listened to
everybody involved in or looking on to a monotonous din of words, like a
tide crashing and receding on a beach - making a great noise and saying the
same thing over and over.
And this ordeal triggered a nightmare - a day-mare, if you like.
Through the ceaseless tide I heard a voice, a very English voice of an old
man - Prime Minister Chamberlain saying: "I believe it is peace for our
time" - a sentence that prompted a huge cheer, first from a listening street
crowd and then from the House of Commons and next day from every newspaper
in the land.
There was a move to urge that Mr Chamberlain should receive the Nobel Peace
Prize.
In Parliament there was one unfamiliar old grumbler to growl out: "I
believe we have suffered a total and unmitigated defeat."
He was, in view of the general sentiment, very properly booed down.
This scene concluded in the autumn of 1938 the British prime minister's
effectual signing away of most of Czechoslovakia to Hitler.
The rest of it, within months, Hitler walked in and conquered.
"Oh dear," said Mr Chamberlain, thunderstruck. "He has betrayed my trust."
During the last fortnight a simple but startling thought occurred to me -
every single official, diplomat, president, prime minister involved in the
Iraq debate was in 1938 a toddler, most of them unborn. So the dreadful
scene I've just drawn will not have been remembered by most listeners.
Hitler had started betraying our trust not 12 years but only two years
before, when he broke the First World War peace treaty by occupying the
demilitarised zone of the Rhineland.
Only half his troops carried one reload of ammunition because Hitler knew
that French morale was too low to confront any war just then and 10 million of 11 million British voters had signed a so-called peace ballot.
It stated no conditions, elaborated no terms, it simply counted the numbers
of Britons who were "for peace".
The slogan of this movement was "Against war and fascism" - chanted at the
time by every Labour man and Liberal and many moderate Conservatives - a
slogan that now sounds as imbecilic as "against hospitals and disease".
In blunter words a majority of Britons would do anything, absolutely
anything, to get rid of Hitler except fight him.
At that time the word pre-emptive had not been invented, though today it's a
catchword.
After all the Rhineland was what it said it was - part of Germany. So to
march in and throw Hitler out would have been pre-emptive - wouldn't it?
Nobody did anything and Hitler looked forward with confidence to gobbling up
the rest of Western Europe country by country - "course by course", as
growler Churchill put it.
I bring up Munich and the mid-30s because I was fully grown, on the verge of
30, and knew we were indeed living in the age of anxiety.
And so many of the arguments mounted against each other today, in the last
fortnight, are exactly what we heard in the House of Commons debates and
read in the French press.
The French especially urged, after every Hitler invasion, "negotiation,
negotiation".
They negotiated so successfully as to have their whole country defeated and
occupied.
But as one famous French leftist said: "We did anyway manage to make them
declare Paris an open city - no bombs on us!"
In Britain the general response to every Hitler advance was disarmament and
collective security.
Collective security meant to leave every crisis to the League of Nations.
It would put down aggressors, even though, like the United Nations, it had
no army, navy or air force.
The League of Nations had its chance to prove itself when Mussolini invaded
and conquered Ethiopia (Abyssinia).
The League didn't have any shot to fire. But still the cry was chanted in
the House of Commons - the League and collective security is the only true
guarantee of peace.
But after the Rhineland the maverick Churchill decided there was no
collectivity in collective security and started a highly unpopular campaign
for rearmament by Britain, warning against the general belief that Hitler
had already built an enormous mechanised army and superior air force.
But he's not used them, he's not used them - people protested.
Still for two years before the outbreak of the Second War you could read the
debates in the House of Commons and now shiver at the famous Labour men -
Major Attlee was one of them - who voted against rearmament and still went
on pointing to the League of Nations as the saviour.
Now, this memory of mine may be totally irrelevant to the present crisis.
It haunts me.
I have to say I have written elsewhere with much conviction that most
historical analogies are false because, however strikingly similar a new
situation may be to an old one, there's usually one element that is
different and it turns out to be the crucial one.
It may well be so here. All I know is that all the voices of the 30s are
echoing through 2003.
Thank you very much for this post. There are none so blind as those who will not see.