Iraq agreed yesterday in Geneva to resume weapons inspections under existing UN Security Council resolutions, but the US State Department said Washington would "thwart" any effort to return UN inspectors to Iraq before the passing of a tougher Security Council resolution. Conor O'Clery reports from New York
The US instead stepped up pressure on the Security Council for a new resolution authorising military force to guarantee full access to suspected Iraqi weapons sites.
However, the 15 council members seemed hopelessly split on a proposed US text now circulating at UN headquarters in New York.
In Vienna, chief UN weapons inspector, Dr Hans Blix, said Iraq had agreed to a return of inspectors, and that an advance team could be in Baghdad in two weeks. The agreement does not change existing rules on restricted access to eight Iraqi presidential sites.
The US President, Mr George Bush, heaped scorn yesterday on a French proposal for a first UN resolution demanding a return to inspections, followed by a second threatening military action if Iraq fails to comply.
"I'm just not going to accept something that is weak. It's not worth it," Mr Bush said. "The United Nations must show its backbone and we'll work with members of the Security Council to put some calcium in the backbone."
The five permanent members of the UN Security Council - Russia, China, France, US and Britain - met yesterday in New York as the ten elected members waited impatiently to be shown a text of the US resolution. "There was no meeting of minds," a UN diplomat said. British and US diplomats briefed the ten late on Monday on the US resolution but the elected members were not shown a text. "It was an anti-climax," one diplomat said, adding that there was now a "major fault line" in the council over the issue of a new resolution.
The US needs a majority of nine of the 15 members for its resolution to pass. If France, Russia and China abstain, as appears likely, it will only take four of the 10 elected members to follow the same course to block the US resolution.
Columbia, Bulgaria, Norway and Singapore are expected to support Washington, diplomats say, while Guinea and Cameroon, as Francophone countries, usually follow the French but are susceptible to US pressure.
Mauritius is doubtful and Syria and Mexico are unlikely to follow the US line. In this complex situation, Ireland could find itself in a worse-case scenario, having to decide whether to cast a decisive vote authorising the US to start a war with Iraq. The Security Council wants to take responsibility to avoid a US-led invasion, but not to become an instrument of the will of the US, one diplomatic source said, adding, "It's a case of damned if you do and damned if you don't."
The draft resolution would give Iraq seven days to meet UN demands and 30 days to declare banned weapons, with member-states authorised to take "all means necessary" if Iraq fails to meet the terms.