[Timber Loftis]

The coolest thing about these debates was at the end - when Israel and Palestine got jiggy with each other. Check out the last paragraph.

UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 17 — The United States today offered France what it called a final proposal for a Security Council resolution to disarm Iraq, seeking to break a deadlock that threatened to paralyze the Council.

Council diplomats said the new American proposal included a serious offer of compromise in answer to France's demand for a second stage of debate and voting before the United States and its allies could go to war against President Saddam Hussein.

Britain, the United States' only ally so far in its campaign for military action against Baghdad, stepped in to try to bridge the persisting gap between Washington and Paris, assuring France and other wary Council members that London would insist on another round of "detailed discussions" before any military assault.

France did not immediately agree to the United States offer, and in a speech this afternoon before the Council, Ambassador Jean-David Levitte reiterated the two-stage proposal unchanged.

But French diplomats said they were more optimistic than they have been in weeks that a compromise could be reached.

In what appeared to be the last round of brinkmanship in hard negotiations that have dragged on for five weeks, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said in New York today that Washington would insist on a single resolution that would spell out clearly that "if Iraq fails to abide by United Nations resolutions, there have to be consequences and action has to be taken."

But according to a Council diplomat familiar with the talks, the United States was prepared to give up a completely explicit authorization of the use of military force in the first resolution if it would not have to go back to the Council for a second vote, where other members with veto power could block American-led military action.

The intense diplomacy came on the second day of an unusual open debate on Iraq in the Council chambers that included both the 15 Council members and dozens of nonmember nations. In speech after speech, countries expressed an overwhelming consensus in favor of returning United Nations arms inspectors to Iraq to give Baghdad a last chance to give up its prohibited weapons and resolve the crisis peacefully.

Secretary Powell said the talks were "going well."

Russia, also speaking before the Council, questioned Washington's motives and sternly rejected any authorization of military action in advance of thorough weapons inspections.

"If we are not talking about inspections," said the Russian ambassador, Sergey Lavrov, "but about an attempt to use the Security Council to create a legal basis for the use of force or even for a regime change of a United Nations member state, then we see no way how the Security Council could give its consent to that."

Russia is a permanent, veto-bearing member of the Security Council, along with the United States, Britain, France and China.

The specific language that would be included in the American and British draft resolution is still under discussion, Council diplomats said. But Washington's proposal, prompted by an idea from Britain, was to include two new clauses. One of them would acknowledge the Council's option of meeting to consider a new resolution after the weapons inspectors have begun their work and report back on it, Bush administration officials said. The other new clause would threaten "consequences" if Iraq did not cooperate.

The administration's fear has been that if the inspectors do not report unambiguous arms violations by Iraq, the Council would fall to quibbling over the results, as it has in the past, and the United States would be further isolated in its drive to launch a war to oust Mr. Hussein.

Bush administration officials insisted that they had not retreated from their demand for immediate authority to use military force.

"The United States, in the presence of continued violations, new material breaches, will have the authority to do what we believe is necessary to protect our people and protect our friends," Secretary Powell said.

"Obviously, " he said, "the Council can always go off and have other discussions at any time it chooses."

Speaking before the Council today, the American ambassador, John D. Negroponte, said the United States would present its resolution formally "in the near future." American officials, seeking to raise the pressure as high as they could, suggested that the administration was prepared to proceed whether France agreed or not. Diplomats said the resolution could be adopted by the end of next week. The weapons inspectors would begin returning to Iraq about 10 days after that.

Secretary Powell met in New York today with Hans Blix, the head of the United Nations weapons inspections team. He also talked by telephone with Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov of Russia and the French foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin.

Mr. Ivanov said in Moscow that the new United States' proposal "takes into account our viewpoint."

Speaker after speaker in debate today echoed a call issued yesterday by Secretary General Kofi Annan for unity in confronting Iraq. Many nations also said they wanted the weapons inspectors to return to give Iraq a chance to come clean of any weapons of mass destruction, so the Council could lift the economic sanctions imposed in 1991.

Even Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's ambassador, felt forced to insist that "our first preference is a peaceful solution.

He said that whenever Mr. Blix or weapons inspectors reported that Iraq was not cooperating, Britain would insist on a new Council meeting to "hear the view" of other members.

Both Sir Jeremy and Secretary Powell pointedly avoided any reference to another Council vote. American officials argued that the new proposal would not give other veto-bearing Council members a chance to block American action down the line, but it would give them an opportunity to decide whether they would join a coalition to oust Mr. Hussein if he balked.

Today's debate ended unexpectedly in an acrimonious verbal confrontation between Israel and the Palestinian representative and other Arab envoys. The fight broke out after the Israeli ambassador, Yehuda Lancry, asked to rebut Arab charges that the Security Council had a double standard because it did not require the same compliance from Israel as from Iraq.

Mr. Lancry said Iraq was a "dictatorship, a serial violator of Council resolutions and human rights," compared with Israel, "a democracy put to the test of survival for decades."

[edit] oops, forgot my ciatation: Today's New York Times

[ 10-18-2002, 09:59 AM: Message edited by: Timber Loftis ]