Blair, Chirac seek path away from war

PARIS - Britain and France are drawing up a possible United Nations timetable to bring the United States back from war with Iraq, it emerged yesterday.

Although the two countries take different views of the Iraqi crisis, they hope to play a pivotal role in the next few days in framing UN action that will steer the US away from an immediate military showdown with Saddam Hussein.

President Jacques Chirac said Paris would consider taking part in UN-approved military action against Baghdad if Iraq refused to allow inspectors to search for weapons of mass destruction.

He made it clear France would only accept punitive action. It would never approve a "preventive" invasion of Iraq to depose Saddam, which would take the world into "extraordinarily dangerous" new territory.

Chirac said Britain and France, the two western European permanent members of the UN security council, were considering drafting a resolution that would give the Iraqi regime "a matter of one, two or three weeks" to agree to admit UN weapons inspectors. If Iraq failed to respond, there should be a second Security Council resolution on US-led military action.

If the UN called for punitive action, France would consider taking part.

President George W. Bush and the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, discussed a different timetable when they met in Washington at the weekend. Bush is expected to outline his ideas for a final UN ultimatum to Iraq when he addresses the UN General Assembly on Friday.

The fact that France is backing similar ideas is regarded as significant because Paris has taken an independent line on policy towards Iraq for almost a decade. Britain has generally followed the US line.

A British-French proposal would be more likely to win over other members of the Security Council than a purely British one.

In an interview with the New York Times yesterday Chirac said that he had had "a very long talk" with Blair before he left for Washington.

But significant differences remain between the American-British position and the French. Officials travelling with Blair at the weekend said the first resolution ought to contain a clear warning that the international community would use force if Iraq refused the inspectors or hampered their work. Chirac appeared to be saying yesterday that the threat of force would need a second resolution. This is unacceptable to Washington and London but efforts will be made to bridge the gap.

Chirac complained that the US and the UN had done nothing to persuade Iraq to re-admit the inspection teams. US Vice-President Dick Cheney had even dismissed such visits as worthless.

"In that case, you might as well simply say that Cheney is going off to fight his war all by himself," Chirac said. "If we explain that inspections aren't worth anything, why should they accept? If you tell Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi leadership ... that we want to attack them, and that in any case the inspectors are useless, of course they'll say no to the inspectors."

Blair was to defend his Iraq policy against critics in a key speech today, saying Saddam's defiance undermines the UN.

Blair's spokesman said he would brand Saddam an "international outlaw" in the speech to a conference of trade unionists in Blackpool.

"In the face of evidence that Saddam has chemical and biological weapons and evidence that he is continuing his efforts to develop nuclear weapons, we cannot stand by and do nothing," Blair was to say.

"We should do everything we can to stop him using weapons he has and getting weapons he wants."

Blair will say the UN is the right forum for dealing with Baghdad. But he will argue that the body's authority has been challenged and weakened by Iraq's refusal to comply with existing weapons inspection resolutions.

A report by a thinktank on Iraq's nuclear capability was seized on by Downing Street yesterday as "evidence" of the threat posed by Saddam.

But the Government faced immediate embarrassment with the same report admitting that Iraq's military capability, including weapons of mass destruction, is far weaker now than it was before the Gulf War in 1991.

The study by the International Institute of Strategic Studies maintained that Iraq would be able to produce a crude nuclear device if it received sufficient weapons grade material and extensive help from a foreign source.

But it said "there is no evidence that Iraq had done so". Developing its own bomb would take "several years" and "how such a weapon can be delivered, and its effectiveness remains open to question".

The report also concluded that Iraq's chemical, biological and ballistic missile programmes were all far less potent now than 11 years ago.

The IISS report, produced over eight weeks starting in June, has been extensively promoted by Downing Street as a comprehensive expose of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

Blair's official spokesman described it as "a powerful picture of a highly unstable regime".

But defence experts and opposition politicians were unconvinced, saying the report had failed to provide the "smoking gun" Downing Street claimed it would do.

Paul Beaver, of Janes Defence Weekly, said: "There's nothing new here, no killer fact that makes me believe that we should go to war."

The position of the hawks on the war on both sides of the Atlantic was further undermined by the Central Intelligence Agency stating in Washington that it would take Iraq five to seven years to complete an indigenous nuclear programme.

- INDEPENDENT, REUTERS

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