US: A conciliatory tone towards critics of US policy does not mean Washington has weakened its resolve, writes Conor O'Clery North America Editor
Why, Donald Rumsfeld was asked, will the US not talk to North Korea, when it is still talking to France?
The lunch-time audience at the Hoover Institute in Washington found this funny, but the often abrasive Secretary of Defence did not take the bait.
"I'm not going there," he told members of the conservative think-tank.
"The French are allies in NATO and North Korea is a very different situation." Similarly, when President Bush was questioned in the White House about critics of his Iraq policy yesterday, he was unusually conciliatory.
"There are people who worry about the future - I understand that," he said.
It was as if the administration had taken a tactical decision to be nice to the world, now that it needs support from a very sceptical Security Council for a new resolution that would secure international approval for a war with Iraq.
But the new tone did not mean any weakening of resolve. Mr Bush made that clear.
"I worry about a future where terrorist organisations are fuelled and funded by Saddam Hussein. That's why we're bringing this issue to a head," he told reporters.
Mr Bush maintains that he has not yet decided on military action, but his diplomats are bringing a different message to governments in state capitals, where Security Council members are evidently being told not to anguish about the vote that would mean the difference between war and peace.
US Undersecretary of State Mr John Bolton told Russian officials in Moscow, "We're going ahead," whether the UN agrees or not, according to the Washington Post.
A diplomat from another council member reportedly said the US message was, "You are not going to decide whether there is war in Iraq or not. That decision is ours and we have already made it. It is already final." National security adviser Ms Condoleezza Rice made it clear that how countries voted would make little difference to US policy. Washington wanted to convince the UN that their responsibilities lay in casting a vote "that will strengthen the role of the council in international politics", she said in a briefing after the US, Spain and Britain produced their new resolution on Monday.
The basic American argument for war is that after September 11th the US cannot risk doing nothing when it sees danger, and that Saddam Hussein has not disarmed and is dangerous.
"The risk of the security of this country being jeopardised at the hands of a madman with weapons of mass destruction far exceeds the risk of any action we might be forced to take," said Mr Bush.
Mr Rumsfeld portrayed Saddam Hussein as a terrorist ally who could help make possible a more terrible attack on the United States, where smallpox planted in just three places could cause a million deaths.
He complained to his audience of the difficulty of convincing people "of the need to prevent something before it happens".
Before the attacks on America, US intelligence only had scraps of information - a credit card here, a phone call there he said. But if President Bush had taken that to the UN as a basis for invading Afghanistan "how many countries would have joined us in a coalition?" In the new security environment after September 11th, the consequences of not linking the dots could be hundreds of thousands of deaths.
Such arguments are much less persuasive outside the US, as Colin Powell found on his just-completed trip to Asia.
The US Secretary of State, mired in one of the messiest episodes in post-Cold War American foreign policy, failed to win any visible pledges in South Korea, China or Japan for the new resolution on Iraq.
Nor did Mr Powell get backing for the administration's hard line against bilateral US talks with North Korea, despite the urgings of the three countries as they watch the situation on the Korean Peninsula deteriorate alarmingly.
The White House is also having a difficult time selling its North Korea policy at home, too, hence the question to Mr Rumsfeld yesterday - why not talk to North Korea?
He replied that bilateral talks would end up very quickly as about "what would the US be willing to pay" to stop North Korea developing nuclear weapons. "It's hard for me to believe there is any price we would be willing to pay - it's a worldwide problem," he said.
As the US lobbying for votes on Iraq at the Security Council gets into high gear, the fact that the Americans were willing to pay almost any price for military access to Turkey has not been lost on the poorer member countries.
The US needs their support to put together a coalition of the willing, or as former US ambassador to NATO, Robert Hunter, called it, a "coalition of the convinced, the concerned and the co-opted".
The administration is in a bind, analysts say. It does not want to be seen bribing or bullying council members, as this would make any UN victory a shallow one. But no one doubts that the pressure will be intense.
It is Washington's strategy to get nine of the 15 votes, and then persuade France not to thwart the will of the majority by applying its veto, a senior UN diplomat said.
That was clearly why Mr Rumsfeld feels now is not the time for more insults about "old Europe", he said, despite the coup staged by Jacques Chirac on Monday when the French President got Germany and Russia to defy Washington, which infuriated the White House.
That did not prevent one cable news network, however, giving much approving coverage yesterday to the French-bashing story of a roadside diner in Beaufort, North Carolina.
There the owner, Niel Roland, has found that business has boomed since he rewrote the menu: instead of "French fries" he now serves "patriotic fries".