Posted on 02/15/2003 6:50:34 PM PST by Sparta
At the end of a week of high drama, the world seems more divided than at any time since the Cold War. Now the first casualty of the crisis may be the UN itself
It was earlier than usual for President George W Bush. At 9pm on Friday, after a final briefing from his officials in the Oval Office, Bush retired to bed. It had been a difficult, awkward, infuriating 24 hours.
A few hundred miles to the north, Dominique de Villepin was enjoying a glass of red wine at the French ambassador to the UN's residence in New York. The French Foreign Minister, who a few hours earlier had electrified the UN Security Council when he said that 'war is always the consequence of defeat', was enjoying a sumptuous four-course dinner and relaying to appreciative French government officials just how he had held the Security Council in the palm of his hands. The view from the high moral ground was certainly a powerful one.
In the same city, Hans Blix, the head of the UN inspection team in Iraq, was preparing for another round of meetings with UN officials. He needed to brief them on the nuances of what he had said that morning during his presentation on Saddam Hussein's compliance with the inspection regime and on his next steps to try to acquire 'immediate and full co-operation' from Iraq on disarmament. It was late at night before he left the UN headquarters building.
Earlier on Friday afternoon, on the other side of the Atlantic, Tony Blair sat alone in his first floor room of the Caledonian Hotel in Edinburgh and started on the final rewrite of one of the most important speeches of his career. The Prime Minister had arrived in the Scottish capital that morning. The short flight from Leeds, where he had just held a business breakfast, had given him a little under an hour to think about the message he had to give the Labour Party at its annual spring conference in Glasgow.
The first draft had circulated around Downing Street officials on Wednesday. But Blair now needed a different tone. Blix's remarkable 30-minute presentation had made sure of that. It was time for the Prime Minister to announce that he was willing to put his political reputation - and his very popularity - on the line.
On the same day, across the country thousands of people were already preparing for the journey to London to demand 'No to War'. Up to a million or more gathered in the capital and Glasgow to say that they were opposed to the government line. De Villepin appeared to speak for world opinion when he said that the case for a military attack on Iraq had not yet been made. Everywhere the mood was against war. Bush was contemplating going it alone against Saddam. Blair was hopelessly isolated.
Twenty-four hours earlier, America and Britain had appeared more bullish. A second UN resolution, opening the way for action against Iraq, would be tabled. It would be passed, perhaps reluctantly, but it would be passed, insisted officials. Blix would give them the opening; he would say there was still lack of compliance. It would be enough.
But Blix didn't and the job of talking round the public has suddenly become a great deal harder. Bush has US public opinion broadly behind him. America supports war, even if the UN doesn't act to disarm Saddam. De Villepin has French public opinion broadly behind him: France does not support military action. Blair has no such luxury. The public is against military action, but Blair thinks war is almost inevitable.
'A disappointment,' said one key Number 10 official after listening to Blix's statement. 'We thought he would be tougher. It's not been the best of days.'
Colin Powell, US Secretary of State and former chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, swept out of the Security Council chamber and stalked down the escalators to the basement briefing room. He had just heard Blix practically destroy any hope of the second resolution being passed by the Security Council. He was furious.
Powell ordered officials to gather together the 'E10', the 10 elected members of the Security Council. He wanted to make his position clear. He, along with Blair, had been the man who had persuaded Bush that a route through the UN and the building of an international coalition was the way to disarm Saddam. The President, after initial reluctance, had finally agreed. Powell had used up a lot of political capital.
He now faced a UN that, according to US officials, was vacillating in the face of Saddam's continued lack of compliance with Resolution 1441, the 'disarm or else' resolution as it is described by British and American diplomats. 'This cannot go on,' Powell told the assembled ministers. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, was called in to offer support.
Straw had always been clear on Powell's position. In a series of meetings, Powell has made it plain why, despite being once described as one of the leading American doves on Iraq, he had entered the camp of the hawks. 'I have been an advocate of containment [over Iraq],' Powell said in a recent interview. 'I worked very hard the first year and a half of this administration to put in place smart sanctions, another form of containment.
'Yet we found that, even with all these containment efforts of the past 12 years, they have not served to stop Saddam and his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, or encourage him to get rid of the weapons of mass destruction that we know he has.'
This was the message Powell reiterated as he pounded the corridors of the UN on Friday. But to no avail. After the half-hour meeting in the basement, some delegates from the smaller nations were so alarmed at the widening gulf between America, Britain and Spain on the one hand and France, Russia, Germany and China on the other that they demanded a toning down of the rhetoric.
'This is not doing any of us any good,' one UN official said. It was the most damaging split that the UN Security Council had seen since the Cold War.
It had started well enough. On Friday morning, both American and British officials were still confident that Blix would 'produce the goods'. One Number 10 official said, just hours before Blix spoke, that the British Government response would be 'very tough'. Although British diplomats received some 'limited briefing' on the contents of Blix's statement, they were convinced that there would be enough on non-compliance to push for a second resolution this week.
Their resolve had been strengthened by a meeting between Condoleezza Rice, the US National Security Adviser, and Blix on Wednesday. Rice had been assured that Blix was well aware of the need for further compliance and that the threat of force had been a key element in forcing Saddam to comply with the inspections regime. Rice had told Sir David Manning, Blair's foreign policy adviser, that America was wedded to a second resolution.
With that in mind, US officials started sending out the message that Russia and China would fall into line. Government sources in Britain said that it was 'almost inconceivable' that France would threaten to use its veto.
As the clock ticked round to 10.28am, Blix was called to make his second report to the Security Council. Straw, who flew in on Concorde with Peter Ricketts, the political director at the Foreign Office and civil service link-man to Number 10, only just made it as traffic snarled its way to the city centre from JFK airport.
Already the mood was changing. Powell, so ebullient when he made his statement to the Security Council a week earlier, was subdued. He shook hands as he made his way around the table, agreeing even to the diplomatic niceties of sharing a joke with De Villepin. But the tension in the officials that surrounded him was clear to see.
Blix's presentation was delivered in his inimitably dry, roundabout language. But the content fell far short of Blix's statement to the Security Council on 27 January. There was no more talk of Saddam's 'dark caves' that still needed to be checked. No more talk of the Iraqi dictator not really understanding that compliance with 1441 meant more than simply opening a few gates to former military sites. It meant active and substantive co-operation.
As Blix continued, Powell's expression was icy. This was not what he wanted to hear. This was not what the American administration wanted to hear. There was an almost audible gasp in the chamber as Blix turned to the 'clinching' evidence that Powell had presented to the Security Council the previous week. It was ambiguous and unconvincing, Blix said. Although deadly chemical weaponry remains unaccounted for, no arms of mass destruction had been found. Blix described the inspectors' brief as theoretically 'open-ended'.
But the show had only just begun. When Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister, called each of the UN Security Councils' 15 Foreign Ministers to respond to Blix, everyone hung on what De Villepin would say. No one was in any doubt that the French would call for more time for inspections. But the method of De Villepin's presentation totally wrong-footed America and Britain.
It had been clear from last weekend that France would go against America. It had already led a blocking manoeuvre at Nato to stop reinforcements heading to Turkey in the event of war.
And then there was the announcement of the Franco-German 'joint policy'. Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder proposed Operation Mirage as a way to sideline the military option - a trebling of the number of inspectors and the introduction of UN soldiers to ensure compliance. Britain and America were completely blind-sided by the announcement, which was leaked to a German magazine.
At the heart of the Franco-German approach has been a single goal - to stall the Bush administration's trajectory towards war by keeping the inspectors in Iraq. That tactic was revealed last month by sources at the International Atomic Energy Agencyas its director, Mohammed El Baradei, worked on his last report to the UN. A source predicted what the two European countries were hoping to achieve: 'They want to keep the inspectors in and reporting every fortnight. They reason that, as long as El Baradei and Blix are being asked to keep coming back to the Security Council; as long as inspectors are still at work and not pulled out; then America can't go to war.'
The first Whitehall officials knew of Operation Mirage was when they started reading about it in the press. 'We were furious,' said one. 'The Prime Minister has had a number of private dinners with Schröder over the past few weeks, but we were not told anything about it.' Officials were left saying that there were no 'concrete proposals', even while Russia, in the shape of President Putin, and China, were agreeing to sign up.
Even at that stage, Britain and America thought that all might not be lost. At the time of the Franco-German announcement, Blix had said that the inspectorate did not need more inspectors; it just needed Saddam to comply. The message strengthened US and British views that Blix would give them enough to move to the next stage of action on Iraq.
But following Blix's much more even-handed report, De Villepin seized his moment. Before he made his 20-minute presentation, no one could have predicted that the Security Council meeting would create an overnight diplomatic superstar, and that, for the very first time in this crisis, America would look decidedly uncomfortable.
De Villepin using the overblown language for which fellow diplomats usually mock France, but which this time proved devastatingly effective. 'In this temple of the United Nations, we are guardians of an ideal,' said De Villepin. 'War is always the sanction of failure'. At one point, he turned the now infamous insult by Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, about 'Old Europe' on its head, into a badge of pride and wisdom. France, he said, was 'an old country'.
The first surprise after De Villepin's concluding 'Merci' was an outburst of applause. This had not happened within the council's living memory during a session as sombre as this. Most of it came from delegations that were not members of the council. But it was joined by those ranked behind the foreign ministers of China, Russia, Germany and others. A group from the Cameroon made to rise from their seats, but checked themselves, remembering that they were, after all, diplomats.
'Yes I did applaud,' admitted Angola's Cesar Texeira Esteves, 'I was moved by what was said.' So much for Bush's last-ditch telephone call to the Angolan president earlier in the week. Bush also called Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf earlier that morning in a desperate final round of diplomacy. But he was unconvincing. Pakistan's UN ambassador, Munir Akram, told the council that Saddam 'was making progress'.
Such was the impact of De Villepin's speech that he had the audacity to leave the session while it was still in full swing to gratify the clamouring journalists who had collected outside the chamber. Now it was time for the suave Gucci Gaullist to quote John Lennon: 'Give peace a chance,' he said, savouring every moment.
For years France's post-colonial arrogance and its habit of goading the Americans has been derided as comic amour-propre, and indeed the posturing of 'Old Europe'. Now, the cockerel was crowing with new-found vigour, and outside the oak doors of the Security Council chamber, De Villepin had planted the tricouleur back at the centre of things, to the New World's exasperation.
Back inside, it was now the turn of the wild card among the permanent five members of the Security Council, any of whom could veto a second resolution that would the way for war against Iraq. Diplomats didn't known quite what to expect from the Chinese delegation, with many wondering whether the usual carrot of free trade with the West would bring Beijing back into line with the US yet again.
But it emerged that the French and Germans had been lobbying hard behind closed doors much more successfully that Bush. They were well aware of what Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan was going to say. If Powell had also known, that did not prevent him from looking as though Banquo's ghost had just walked into the room.
'Some positive results' had emerged from the inspectors' efforts, said Jiaxuan. 'It is necessary for the inspectors' work in Iraq to continue.' There was another ripple of applause. Even Fischer, although sympathetic to the argument, felt obliged to ask for silence and an observance of diplomatic protocol.
Some comfort followed, from Spain's Foreign Minister, Ana Palacio, who backed putting further pressure on Iraq to comply, before Straw's turn came. The British Foreign Secretary had prepared his speech before entering the chamber. He always carries a set of yellow legal pads with him, and a red felt-tip pen. As he heard De Villepin's statement and China's follow-up, he began scribbling furiously on his pad. His speech needed to be rewritten.
His words were strong and, at the beginning, laced with humour. 'Britain was founded in 1066,' Straw said, referring to the 'old' issue once more. Before adding, with a smile: 'By the French.'
His thrust was serious. Iraq has 'lied and deceived' he said before going on to describe the 12 years that have passed since 1991 as 'a time of humiliation' for the UN, and to argue that 'the issue is the authority of the United Nations, and the defiance of UN resolutions'. But for many watching the performance, dragging the few scraps of comfort from Blix - he had said that Saddam had still to fully comply - was only a fig-leaf to cover the isolation that both the Foreign Secretary and Colin Powell were suffering.
Powell was next. He also had a prepared text. But he tore it up and made an appeal direct to the Security Council with no notes. It was time to get personal. He spoke, he said, for 'a relatively new country on the face of the earth' - it was intended to evoke a counter-laugh to De Villepin's jibe, but was greeted with nothing more than stony silence. Powell ploughed on: America was nonetheless, he said, 'the oldest democracy sitting around this table'.
In as vernacular language as he dared, Powell said that Iraq's latest gestures were 'tricks that are being played on us'. He referred back again to the 'post-9/11 nexus between Iraq and the terrorist network'. 'We cannot wait for one of these terrible weapons to detonate in one our cities and wonder where it came from,' Powell argued. When he finished, there was no applause. Just silence.
Outside the main debating chamber is a small lounge, where, after the meeting, ministers, officials and diplomats huddled in corners. All the talk was of America defeat and anger. At 2.30pm, the ministers were called back to the chamber for a, behind-closed-doors session. To the anger of a number of diplomats, Blix appeared more robust in his replies. Powell said that the issue of interviewing scientists - Saddam has so far allowed only three to be spoken to - was one of the most important matters at hand. Straw, too, argued that scientists had to be cross-examined carefully if the truth was going to be established. Neither had been possible and Iraq had insisted that interviews be taped or the scientists have minders.
'If they have nothing to hide, why are they concerned about taping the interviews?' said one diplomatic source. 'It is because they are in fear of their lives, they have to prove that they did not give anything away.'
Blix agreed with Powell, saying that much more needed to be done on the issue of interviews if Saddam was to satisfactorily comply with 1441. As Blair pointed out in his speech yesterday, it was only by interviewing Saddam's brother-in-law, who defected to the West, that any knowledge was gained of Iraq's biological weapons programme. At that stage in the mid-Nineties, weapons inspectors had already been searching the country for four years and had not found a 'smoking gun'.
The head of the UN weapons inspectors also made it clear that it was only the threat of force that had dragged any concessions out of Saddam. He reiterated the argument of Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, who said that diplomacy has to be sometimes backed by military threat. 'We know what he says in private and we know he could have been a lot tougher,' said one Number 10 official. 'But he seems to feel that, as it is under the auspices of the UN, he has to be more careful in public.'
The first that Blair knew that all was not going to plan at the United Nations was when he received a call in his hotel room on Friday afternoon from Manning, his chief foreign policy adviser, who will be taking up the post of ambassador to Washington later this year. Jonathan Powell, his chief of staff, also called. Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister's Director of Strategic Communications, who was sitting in the next door room watching the Blix presentation on television, also spoke to the Prime Minister.
After discussions over dinner with Campbell, Sally Morgan, Blair's political secretary, and Pat McFadden, another key Number 10 official, who were all staying with Blair, a consensus emerged. Yes, it made the job of persuasion about the need for action much tougher, but it also meant that the Prime Minister had to be willing to put his personal reputation on the line if he was to remain consistent with his 'shoulder-to-shoulder' stance with George W. Bush and America.
'He had to make the moral case and show that he did not fear being unpopular if he believed what he was doing was right,' one senior source in the Prime Minister's inner circle said.
The following morning he was whisked by armoured car along the motorway to Glasgow. As the helicopters droned over the vaulting silver arches of the Clyde Auditorium in Glasgow, and policemen in black boilersuits searched the frosted bushes in the car park one more time, delegates filed into the hall to the strains - bizarrely - of Atomic Kitten.
They gave a patient reception to the Home Secretary, David Blunkett, speaking off the cuff in an emotional appeal for unity. But by the time that the Prime Minister strode on to the lavender stage a good quarter of an hour late, the mood was tense. The doom-laden predictions that he would face empty seats, rowdy heckling, even a walkout crumbled away. Tony Blair was met with a standing ovation. He was listened to in intense silence, broken only by small ripples of applause when he said that taking the right decisions were not always the popular ones and that he wanted to persevere with the UN route for as long as possible.
Abandoning whole swathes of his printed text - the more parochial stuff about petty vandalism, dirty pavements and mattresses abandoned in the street were now not equal to such a historic occasion - Blair stumbled occasionally over the newer lines, but the meaning was clear - there was no going back, however unpopular and frightening the prospect of military action. He ended to another standing ovation and was flying back to London before lunch and the bulk of the protesters arrived.
Blair knows that, after this week, the arguments to be made are much harder. Bush could quite easily, and possibly with little political damage to himself, go ahead with military action against Iraq with a 'coalition of the willing' and no UN endorsement. Blair would find such a move politically dangerous, possibly fatal.
He knows it. Those around him know it: 28 February is now seen as the next deadline, the date of the next Blix report. Either Blix gives America and Britain what they want - a clear statement that Saddam is not complying with Resolution 1441 and is now running out of road - or Blair will find his premiership on the line.
As he said in his speech, many mocked when he said that this was going to be bleakest and toughest year of his premiership. 'You say that every year,' one ministerial colleague had said. It is now clear that the prediction was true.
Individual nations must decide for themselves when it's time for war, and ... George Bush is right. Saddam Hussein's regime must go.
I love it when a plan comes together.
Abandoning whole swathes of his printed text - the more parochial stuff about petty vandalism, dirty pavements and mattresses abandoned in the street were now not equal to such a historic occasion - Blair stumbled occasionally over the newer lines, but the meaning was clear - there was no going back, however unpopular and frightening the prospect of military action. He ended to another standing ovation and was flying back to London before lunch and the bulk of the protesters arrived.Blair knows that, after this week, the arguments to be made are much harder. Bush could quite easily, and possibly with little political damage to himself, go ahead with military action against Iraq with a 'coalition of the willing' and no UN endorsement. Blair would find such a move politically dangerous, possibly fatal.
He knows it. Those around him know it: 28 February is now seen as the next deadline, the date of the next Blix report. Either Blix gives America and Britain what they want - a clear statement that Saddam is not complying with Resolution 1441 and is now running out of road - or Blair will find his premiership on the line.
As he said in his speech, many mocked when he said that this was going to be bleakest and toughest year of his premiership. 'You say that every year,' one ministerial colleague had said. It is now clear that the prediction was true.
It does appear to me that President Bush and Tony Blair are exactly right. If since 1991 the U.N. has passed (I believe) 17 resolutions against Iraq and they have yet to comply, they will become a non-entity - 'irrelevant' as Bush says. I don't care if we have United Nations French and German support or not. But for Tony Blair, a war resolution seems necessary. I don't understand why, however, if the last one had a use of force provision in it.
Blair is the US's best advocate across the pond in the War on Terror, imho. Here is my comment and an excerpt (from another article) from the speech they are referencing:
Excellent ! Thanks for the post !This bears repeating. Not too unlike Churchill's speech of yesteryear?
Tony Blair: The price of my conviction
But there are also consequences of 'stop the war'. There will be no march for the victims of Saddam, no protests about the thousands of children that die needlessly every year under his rule, no righteous anger over the torture chambers which if he is left in power, will remain in being.
I rejoice that we live in a country where peaceful protest is a natural part of our democratic process. But I ask the marchers to understand this.
I do not seek unpopularity as a badge of honour. But sometimes it is the price of leadership and the cost of conviction.
If there are 500,000 on the [Stop the War] march, that is still less than the number of people whose deaths Saddam has been responsible for. If there are one million, that is still less than the number of people who died in the wars he started.
So if the result of peace is Saddam staying in power, not disarmed, then I tell you there are consequences paid in blood for that decision too. But these victims will never be seen, never feature on our TV screens or inspire millions to take to the streets. But they will exist none the less.
| President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair of England walk out to address the media in Cross Hall at the White House Nov. 7. "We've got no better friend in the world than Great Britain," said the President during his remarks. White House photo by Paul Morse. |
Reminds me of Winston Churchill; the Brits tossed him out because he wanted to stop Hitler; and then they begged him to return ... in the nick of time.
Wishing dictators away doesn't work.
Let's Roll !!
And why I will not [join anti-war demo, by an Iraqi living in the UK]
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