 |
|
Georgetown students protest a possible U.S. strike on Iraq
|
UNITED
NATIONS, October 24 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – Under
pressure from Washington to act, the U.N. Security Council will meet
again Friday, October 25, after it met Wednesday, October 23, to
discuss Iraq as Baghdad denounced a new U.S. draft resolution on
weapons inspections as a declaration of war.
US
officials warned for the second day that time is running out as the
full 15-member council met to consider the latest version of a U.S.
draft resolution insisting Iraq disarm.
“We
are giving members the most up-to-date version” of the draft, said
Richard Grenell, spokesman for U.S. ambassador John Negroponte.
Grenell
did not say when the United States might seek a vote on the
resolution, but one council diplomat said a vote was unlikely before
Monday.
Washington
turned up the pressure, however, warning for the second day in a row
that time was running out for U.N. action.
State
Department spokesman Philip Reeker said Washington still was trying to
forge a compromise, but has not changed its expectations.
“This
is really an opportunity for the United Nations to show its relevance.
A strong resolution, as we’ve said before, backed with serious
consequences is the way to prevent war,” he said.
U.N.
diplomats said Wednesday’s meeting of the Security Council’s five
permanent members - Britain, China, France, Russia and the United
States - might be their last attempt to reach agreement on Iraq before
holding a full Council meeting.
White
House spokesman Ari Fleischer, who along with President George W. Bush
has been making statements betraying growing frustration with the
world body, said the end is coming into sight.
“The
end is either an agreement or a failure to reach agreement, and it
could be either one right now,” he said.
Bush
national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said Washington was not
setting any specific timetable for action, but said diplomacy “takes
time, but we don’t have endless time.”
Fleischer
brushed off recent criticism from France and Russia to the
U.S.-crafted measure calling for tough new weapons inspections and
dire consequences for Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein if he fails to
comply.
Baghdad
criticized the U.S. draft as a humiliation for the United nations.
“The revised U.S. draft, which is worse (than the initial one), is a
humiliation for the United Nations and the international community,”
Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri told Qatar’s Al-Jazeera television
channel Thursday.
“The
draft is a declaration of war against the United Nations, and not only
against Iraq. Its goal consists not only of attacking Iraq but also
harming the prestige of the United Nations,” Sabri said.
Iraq
had taken “all necessary steps to welcome teams of inspectors,”
Sabri said, expressing hope that the Security Council “will not
adopt measures that will block the missions of these teams.”
“The
measures contained in the U.S. draft pose impossible questions,”
Sabri said.
Bush
has been stressing in recent speeches that if the United Nations
stalls he is ready to act on a congressional resolution authorizing
him to attack Iraq when he decides diplomacy has failed.
The
U.S. leader insists Saddam has developed chemical and biological arms
in violation of U.N. resolutions he agreed to as part of the price for
the ceasefire ending the 1991 Gulf War and is seeking nuclear weapons
as well. Iraq denies the charges.
Persistent
U.S. attempts to push a new resolution on arms inspections in Iraq are
designed to contrive a pretext for attacking the country, Iraqi Vice
President Taha Yassin Ramadan said in Abu Dhabi.
“The
insistence of the criminal U.S. administration on having the Security
Council adopt a new resolution is clearly part of US plots to justify
an aggression against Iraq,” Ramadan told Abu Dhabi satellite
television.
“What’s
the justification for having a (new) resolution” after Iraq agreed
in mid-September to readmit arms inspectors, asked Ramadan, adding he
was surprised UN chief Kofi Annan should call for such a resolution.
In
a bid to get the support of Russia and France - which are holding out
for a two-step approach - the United States has dropped its demand for
an automatic authorization of the use of force to compel Iraqi
disarmament if it does not comply with the resolution.
The
revised U.S. draft makes tougher demands on Iraq, including
“immediate, unimpeded, unconditional and unrestricted access” to
any site including eight presidential palaces and their extensive
surroundings.
But
it does not say that military action against Iraq must be authorized
by the council, and one diplomat remarked that the United States might
seize on the expressions “material breach” and “serious
consequences” - which appear in the first paragraphs of the draft -
to justify one.
Russia
dismissed the U.S. draft outside the council meeting.
“We
cannot agree to any automacity in the use of force, and we cannot
agree to unimplementable, unrealistic demands” imposed against the
wishes of the arms inspectors, Russian U.N. ambassador Sergei Lavrov
said.
British
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said however he believed a compromise
could be reached, adding that the U.N. negotiations had “so far been
constructive.” Britain is the European country which most strongly
backs Bush’s hard line on Iraq, though its government stops short of
demanding Saddam’s ouster.
In
the U.S., Georgetown University students held a ‘die-in’ protest
Wednesday, October 23, against the possibility of the United States
going to war with Iraq, on the university’s campus in Washington,
D.C.
The
protest was sponsored by the university's Muslim Students Assocation,
Young Arab Leadership Alliance, Georgetown Peace Action and the campus
Green party
