US delays Iraq UN vote after France, Russia veto threat

12.00 pm

UPDATE - The United States and Britain have delayed a United Nations vote on their resolution giving Iraq a March 17 ultimatum to disarm or face war, after France and Russia threatened a veto and six uncommitted nations refused to back Washington.

With President George W Bush anxious to resolve the UN standoff quickly and with 300,000 troops poised to invade Iraq, the United States was forced to accept a delay in its diplomatic timetable due to lack of support at the UN.

Security Council consultations this morning (NZ time)were overshadowed by a bombshell from Paris, when French President Jacques Chirac made it clear he was prepared to go to the limit in his diplomatic confrontation with Bush to prevent the UN from authorizing an attack on Iraq.

"France will vote 'no' because she considers tonight that there is no reason to wage a war to reach the goal we set ourselves, that is the disarmament of Iraq," Chirac said in a television interview.

"When one of the five permanent members votes 'no', even if there is a majority, the resolution is not adopted," he added.

Russia said today (NZ time) it would also veto the resolution, although the comments by Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov seemed directed at the present wording of the draft, which Britain said on Monday may be modified.

Bush has said he was ready to launch a war against Iraq to remove Iraqi President Saddam Hussein with or without United Nations backing. But the political costs to Bush, and especially to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, of going to war without UN authorisation, were mounting.

The United States had hoped to line up at least nine votes in the 15-member Security Council so it could at least claim some moral legitimacy for its ultimatum even if the resolution was killed by a veto.

But US diplomats made no public headway on Monday and Washington was left with only four sure votes -- those of Britain, Spain and Bulgaria as well as its own.

France, Russia, China, Germany and Syria are definitely opposed. Pakistan, Chile, Mexico, Angola, Cameroon and Guinea remained uncommitted and were floating compromises that gave Iraq more time to comply.

Britain's UN ambassador, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, told reporters: "I do not expect in the circumstances we find ourselves in just now that there would be a vote on our draft resolution within the next 24 hours."

France, Russia and China, each of which have Security Council veto power, had all previously expressed opposition to war and but none had made it so absolutely clear they were ready to wield their veto power.

Chirac said he believed Russia and China would both join France in vetoing the resolution.

A senior US official reacted coolly to Chirac's pledge. "We're under no illusions about France," said the official, who asked not to be named.

The resolution would set March 17 for Iraq to satisfy all Security Council resolutions that it was fully cooperating with disarmament demands. Opponents said the text amounted to a blank check for Washington to wage war.

Diplomats said the longer the vote was delayed, the more unreasonable the March 17 deadline would appear.

The political cost of his strong support for Bush was mounting for Blair, who faced an outright revolt in his Labour Party. A strong anti-war movement has sprung up all over the world and even in the United States support for the war seems lukewarm.

One new poll released Monday said support for war without UN backing was 49 per cent with 47 per cent opposed.

Blair's International Development Secretary, Clare Short, threatened to resign if Britain went to war without UN backing. A recent poll showed that only 15 per cent of Britons would back war without a UN mandate.

Britain said it was considering modifying the UN draft to add a timetable of key tests on disarmament which Iraq must comply with by March 17. A British spokesman said the deadline might also be extended -- but not by much.

Bush has been working the phones to foreign leaders. Chinese President Jiang Zemin urged Bush to resolve the Iraqi crisis peacefully and to let inspections continue, China's official Xinhua news agency said.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell met the foreign minister of Guinea, Francois Ousseynou Fall, and called top officials in Angola, Mexico and Pakistan.

Meanwhile, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin embarked on a whistle-stop tour around Africa, lobbying three Security Council members for votes, Angola, Cameroon and Ginea.

In The Hague, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned that if military action were taken without the authority of the Security Council, "the legitimacy and support for any such action would be seriously impaired."

In Iraq, authorities said they had begun destroying six more prohibited al-Samoud 2 missiles yesterday, after scrapping more than 40 in recent days.

But Washington was playing up the discovery by UN inspectors of an undeclared Iraqi drone that it said could threaten Iraq's neighbours with chemical and biological weapons and might exceed legal range limits.

The inspectors' report, however, said further investigation was required to establish whether any drone Iraq has exceeded the 150km limit set by the UN Security Council resolutions.

- REUTERS