Posted on 10-3-2003

Third Tower Under Attack - UN
By Patrick E. Tyler, NTY, 8 March 2003 (Photo shows UN tower, New York City)

"It is quite clear that the way in which we resolve this problem will
determine not just the future of Iraq," Russia's foreign minister, Igor S.
Ivanov, told the Security Council today. Joschka Fischer, the German
foreign minister, said, "The Security Council — in fact, we all — face an
important decision, probably a historic turning point." History will turn,
he implied, on what the Council members do now, whether they hang together
as a world body or splinter apart in bitter dissent over American war plans
in Iraq.

No one mentioned it publicly, but some members said they were also thinking
about North Korea. If the Security Council cannot play the primary
authorizing role in Iraq, it might throw the international system off
balance in trying to unite in preventing the Korean peninsula from becoming
a zone of nuclear threat and competition. Then comes Iran, where
international concerns about a secret nuclear weapons program are rising as
Tehran's leaders sharply expand their civilian nuclear industries with
heavy Russian assistance and technology. In each case, America has asserted
a security interest in the potential threats. Thus the consequences for how
the Iraq crisis is resolved radiate out in many directions.

After today's mixed report on Iraqi compliance delivered by Hans Blix and
Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief weapons inspectors, and after two hours of
debate and commentary by the foreign ministers, a sobering realization
settled over the gleaming tower on the East River, some diplomats said.
Their feeling is that the Americans are certain President Saddam Hussein
will never change his ways or cease being a threat. For that reason,
Washington seems unwilling to wait, unwilling to negotiate more than a few
days' extension or even to consider that the armies now massing to strike
Iraq are a diplomatic instrument that could still produce results short of
war.

Many diplomats have heard — and believe — the rumors that were set off by
the visit to the White House by Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the Middle East
commander: Mr. Bush has given the go-ahead; war is days away, not weeks. If
the rumors are true, they might explain, they say, the tight deadlines in
the offer that Washington and its allies in London and Madrid made today to
extend to March 17 the deadline for Mr. Hussein to disarm.

The departure of an Arab League delegation for Baghdad, a final effort to
show the Arab world that its leaders have done all they could to avert war,
was for many diplomats another long-anticipated piece of the endgame.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who has been in battle mode for a month
as an advocate of military action, gave little hope that any more
flexibility on the timing existed in Washington.

A European ambassador said that "the vast majority clearly feels that a
decision to go to war" without Security Council authorization "will have a
tremendous impact on the present multilateral system and in particular on
the system of the United Nation." What will happen, he asked, when the 15
nations gather next week if Washington fails to attract nine votes to pass
the resolution? "No one is able to foresee the political repercussions of a
situation where the U.S. goes against the expressed will of the Security
Council if the vote on the resolution fails," the ambassador said,
referring to a failure to win nine votes or a veto by Russia, France or
China. He added that "it is an outcome that contains a very high level of
risk," and could add to the incitement of public opinion in the Middle East
and Europe.

After the remarkable unity of last November's 15-0 vote on Resolution 1441,
few if any members of the Council expected to be where they find themselves
today. When Mr. Bush decided to press for one final authorizing resolution,
there seemed little question that America could bend the Security Council
to its will. American diplomats reflected the power calculus many assumed
lay beneath the decision making. But other principles have now been brought
into play, along with the pull of public opinion.

Initially, American diplomats said they were pressing the vote out of
loyalty to Tony Blair, the British prime minister and America's strongest
ally, who is getting scourged at home by public opposition to a war. But
now the prospect of a loss has put British diplomats into a state of alarm
even more intense than that of some Bush administration officials. The
British expect that the political price they pay at home and in relations
with the rest of Europe for acting against the Security Council, if it
comes to that, could be high.

The focus on war overtook the report by Mr. Blix, who made the case that he
might be able in a matter of months to complete his mandate and pronounce
Iraq either free of weapons or guilty of irrevocable stonewalling. He
implied that many of the American assertions that Iraq has continued
producing weapons of mass destruction in mobile or underground facilities
have not been backed up with useful intelligence. He said he continued to
look for underground facilities with sophisticated radar, but had yet to
locate them. And Dr. ElBaradei said some of the intelligence assertions
that Iraq has continued to try to develop industries to support a nuclear
weapons program have not borne up under closer scrutiny.

Still, inside the Security Council, many diplomats believe that the most
important debate is over whether nations should simply bow to America's
will by joining the coalition in hopes of influencing the conduct of the
war that Mr. Bush appears poised to unleash. A number of nations seem
determined to hold their ground, diplomats report, in the belief that no
superpower can function in isolation. "Under any circumstances, the United
States will have to come back to the United Nations," the European
ambassador said, explaining that no coalition will be able to shoulder all
of the rebuilding and relief tasks that will arise under the most
optimistic scenarios for war.

But will there be a UN to come back to?