BERLIN, March 17 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies)
- As the United States asked Monday, March 17, U.N. inspectors to leave
Baghdad and Russia recommended its nationals there to do the same,
Germany, France and Russia reiterated their staunch opposition to any
U.N. resolution authorizing war and called for a “last-ditch” chance for
peace and diplomacy.
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said that Germany
"cannot and will not support any resolution legitimizing war," Agence
France-Presse (AFP) reported.
He said the past few weeks had shown the success of
U.N. weapons inspections in Iraq and called for them to be given more
time.
It was his first public reaction to Sunday's
by U.S. President
George W. Bush that the world faced a " moment of truth" Monday,
following a “war summit” with his key allies British Prime Minister Tony
Blair and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar in Portugal’s Azores
Islands.
Monday was the deadline set by London, Madrid and
Washington in a draft U.N. resolution for Iraq to prove it is fully
disarming or to face war.
Schroeder admitted Sunday, March 16, in an
interview that the prospects of reaching a peaceful resolution to the
Iraq crisis were "slimmer than ever."
Germany sits on the 15-member U.N. Security
Council, but does not have a veto power.
Earlier Monday, the foreign ministry said its
charge d'affaires in Baghdad, Claude Robert Ellner, had closed the
embassy there and set off en route for the Jordanian capital Amman with
the few remaining diplomatic personnel.
Germany had already Friday, March 14, told its
nationals to leave the country.
Earlier in the day, French Foreign Minister
Dominique de Villepin underlined that a second U.N. resolution on Iraq
was unacceptable.
"France cannot accept the resolution on the table
that lays down an ultimatum," de Villepin told Europe 1 radio.
Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief of the International
Atomic Energy Agency, said Monday Washington had asked U.N. inspectors
to withdraw from Iraq.
“Late last night (Sunday), I was advised by the
United States government to pull out our inspectors from Baghdad.
Similar advice has been given to the United Nations Monitoring,
Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC)," he said.
However, al-Jazeera satellite channel quoted the
inspectors as saying that they would only leave Iraq if chief inspectors
Dr. Hans Blix ordered them to do so.
War Would Be A “Mistake”
For his part, Russian President Vladmir Putin said
Monday a U.S.-led war against Iraq would be a "mistake with the most
serious consequences."
"We favor resolving the issue (of Iraqi
disarmament) by peaceful means. Any other development would be a
mistake, leading to casualties and the destabilization of the
international situation as a whole," AFP quoted the Russian leader as
saying.
He said Russia's position on Iraq had remained
clear, comprehensible and constant.
Putin's comments to a group of visiting Chechen
religious leaders were his first direct comments on the Iraq crisis for
several weeks.
Russia earlier urged all nationals in Iraq other
than diplomatic personnel to leave the country.
"In view of the deterioration of the situation in
Iraq, the foreign ministry is recommending to its nationals that they
leave Iraq and refrain from traveling to that country," spokesman
Alexander Yakovenko said in a statement.
A source with the Russian embassy in Baghdad told
the Russian Interfax news agency Monday that the embassy’s staff had
been reduced to around 25 people.
Most Russian technicians and specialists working
under contract in Iraq were flown out of the country last week.
