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| Iraq |
| US, Brits plan |
| 2003-02-19 |
| The US and British governments will begin work today on a new United Nations resolution that will set an ultimatum for Iraq to cooperate fully by next month or face war. The two governments have been on the back foot since the UN chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, produced a report on Friday more favourable to Iraq than expected and, a day later, more than 6 million fools We're doing this for our pal Tony. UN officials expressed relief that Mr Bush has ignored pressure from hawks in his administration. Thus confirming that UN officials are spawned on another planet in a parallel universe and shipped here as part of their probation. The US and Britain, which held their own informal talks in New York yesterday, will sound out other members behind closed doors today at the security council. A security council official said the resolution was unlikely to be tabled until after Mr Blix has reported on February 28. After which it won't matter much anyway. This is just to give the The US and Britain have narrowed down half a dozen variations to an agreement that the draft resolution should take the form of an ultimatum to Iraq. They are considering a list of tests, such as destruction of the Samoud missiles and unrestricted interviews with Iraqi scientists. It is expected to be short and use some of the language of resolution 1441, passed unanimously in November. Worked once. Failure to comply by a fixed date would see the UN declare the inspections process "no longer meaningful", a UN official said. UK ministers and officials hope that President Saddam may yet back down. He won't but that's okay. The timetable for war appears to be slipping. Mr Blix's next report was not, like recent ones, related to resolution 1441, but to an earlier one. That holds out the prospect of a further report stretching into March at least. "February 28 is not likely to be D-day," said one Whitehall insider. When's the new moon? Mr Bush insisted he would not be deflected by the anti-war demonstrations. "Democracy is a beautiful thing and people are allowed to express their opinion. Evidently some in the world don't view Saddam as a risk to peace. I respectfully disagree," he said. Tony Blair seemed confident at his monthly press conference yesterday that the security council would provide the vital diplomatic cover for war, that the process still had weeks to run, and that sceptical voters would be won over in the end. I hope he's saying this for domestic consumption. We don't want this to run for weeks. |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #2 blah blah blah blah...watch the hands not the mouth. |
| Posted by: john 2003-02-19 11:31:46 |
| #1 New Moon: March 3rd |
| Posted by: Anonymous 2003-02-19 05:46:24 |