A rchive Date
[ 10-03-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2003/03/09/39906-cp.html
U.S. cautiously hopeful for UN ultimatum
Sun, March 9, 2003
WASHINGTON (CP) - U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell held out hope Sunday that the United Nations Security Council, other countries and the American public would come to support military action against Iraq, as Washington pressed for an ultimatum giving Baghdad until March 17 to prove it has disarmed.
Powell said he was within "striking distance" of the necessary nine votes to win a majority on the 15-member council. But he conceded on Fox News Sunday that the French appeared set to "do everything they can to stop it" by using their veto. He said it remained unclear where two other veto-bearing countries - Russia and China - stood on a vote that could take place as early as Tuesday.
Nevertheless, Powell said he was leading intensive efforts over the weekend to win over several other governments, hoping to muster the nine necessary votes.
Prime Minister Jean Chretien, meanwhile, warned against attacking Iraq without a UN mandate.
Appearing on ABC's This Week, Chretien also repeated his opposition to making the overthrow of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein a necessary part of any military intervention.
"The question of a change of regime is something else," he said.
"It's something that I'm not very comfortable with . . . because, where do you stop? You do that there and why not elsewhere?"
He said acting unilaterally sets a dangerous precedent.
"China might say: 'We have a problem somewhere; we don't like the regime and we're going to change the regime.' That's why it's dangerous."
The foreign minister of Guinea, a Security Council member, will visit administration officials this week, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said on This Week. Asked whether the administration was trying to entice potential backers with promises of financial aid, as it sought to do with Turkey, Rice said: "We're talking to people about their interests."
Rice refused to say which countries the United States is counting on for supportive votes.
Powell and Rice took to the airwaves in a series of news interviews Sunday amid a tide of opposition to war from foreign leaders and their constituents - and from many Americans. Police arrested five antiwar protesters outside the ABC studios in Washington where Rice was interviewed, and several demonstrators followed her to the CBS offices where she was interviewed by Face the Nation.
Thousands of protesters converged on the White House to voice opposition to war Saturday, and additional demonstrations were planned for Sunday.
Powell and Rice said the administration is following the hard but necessary course to protect Americans, and predicted public opinion would swing the administration's way. "Sometimes public opinion trails behind very difficult decisions," Rice said on CBS.
"As a matter of war and peace, most people would prefer to be on the side of peace - I would prefer to be on the side of peace," Powell said on NBC's Meet the Press.
War "is always unpopular," Powell said. "I've seen it in a number of crises, whether it was going into Panama or the Gulf War, where public opinion is against you until the moment of truth comes when you go in and you find out what they have really been doing, you liberate a people and you create a better life for that country, for the people of that country - then you see that public opinion will change."
But Democratic presidential contender Howard Dean warned that a U.S-led attack would give licence to other countries who felt they needed to pre-emptively attack.
"What is to prevent China, some years down the road, from saying, 'Look what the United States did in Iraq - we're justified in going in and taking over Taiwan?"' Dean said on NBC.
Dean, the former governor of Vermont, said President George W. Bush had not made the case that military action against Iraq was justified. "It is our job to protect ourselves," he said. "Going into Iraq has very little to do with protecting the United States of America, and that's why I think this is a job for the United Nations and not for the United States of America."
Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said military action could threaten the United States by fanning anti-American sentiment
"Anti-Americanism is a threat to us," Levin said on CNN. "We've got to lead the world. We shouldn't be treating the UN as an obstacle, but as an opportunity to rally the world against terrorist threats and not take unilateral actions which could fuel the terrorist response against the United States."
Former President Jimmy Carter, last year's a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, added his voice to that warning. "It is quite possible that the aftermath of a military invasion will destabilize the region and prompt terrorists to further jeopardize our security at home," Carter wrote in a New York Times opinion article Sunday.
"Increasingly unilateral and domineering policies have brought international trust in our country to its lowest level in memory," Carter wrote. "American stature will surely decline further if we launch a war in clear defiance of the United Nations."
 World Fact Book (CIA]
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