February 12, 2003	Wednesday	Zul Hijjah 10, 1423

BRUSSELS, Feb 11: The United States on Tuesday defended its war plans for Iraq both in NATO and at the UN Security Council, but they were dealt another blow when China backed a proposition that would extend UN inspections.

“Warfare is good for no one, and it is our responsibility to take various measures to avoid war,” Chinese President Jiang Zemin was quoted as saying by state media.

A German government source said 11 of the 15 UN Security Council members now support a joint French-German-Russian thrust to have the inspections continue, isolating the United States and three of its allies on the council — Britain, Spain and Bulgaria.

Robust negotiations were underway among diplomats at the United Nations, and at NATO, where a refusal by France, Germany and Belgium to approve defence preparations for Turkey ahead of a US-led war has plunged the Atlantic alliance into crisis and angered Washington.

An emergency session on Tuesday of NATO ambassadors called to break the deadlock — the third in two days — was postponed for hours amid “intensive consultations” among the 19 member states, a NATO official said.

Similar haggling was going on behind the scenes among UN Security Council diplomats, who are to hear a crucial update on Friday from chief weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei.

The German source said the United States was determinedly holding on to its position that the inspections should be aborted and replaced with military action against Iraq.

Among Council members Britain, Spain and Bulgaria backed that stance but “the others support the German position”, he said.

“What the three governments (of Germany, France and Russia) have said... will in all probability be rapidly accepted by a majority in the Security Council,” he added.

French President Jacques Chirac and Russian President Vladimir Putin said in Paris on Monday that their countries and Germany jointly believed it was too early to declare the UN inspections a failure and agreed that force must only be used as a last resort.

“There is still an alternative to war. We are sure of it. The use of force could only be a last resort. Russia, Germany and France are determined to give every chance to the disarmament of Iraq through peaceful means,” Chirac said.

China welcomed that stand on Tuesday, with state media quoting Jiang as telling Chirac by phone that war should be avoided and that “the inspection in Iraq is effective and should be continued and strengthened so as to implement Resolution 1441”.

Britain, China, France, the United States and Russia all hold permanent seats with veto power on the UN Security Council, while Germany, a non-permanent member, holds the body’s rotating presidency this month.

French officials said the joint proposal to increase the number of inspectors and to provide extra technical help, such as surveillance planes, simply strengthened and extended the inspectors’ mandate spelt out under UN Resolution 1441 passed unanimously last November.

Paris said the plan had been sent to Blix and ElBaradei, along with the offer of two Mirage IV spy planes. Moscow made an Antonov-30 aircraft available.

The United States and Britain, on the other hand, are drafting a new resolution that would pave the way for war by declaring that the inspections had failed because of Iraqi intransigence.

Baghdad took steps to weaken the US and British push when it announced on Monday it had given in to a key demand by the inspectors to allow overflights of US U-2 spyplanes — a concession hailed by Russia.

President Saddam said the inspectors’ report on Friday would be an “important test” and warned that the arms inspections should not be a pretext to “facilitate” US aims.

He also claimed his country had “esteem, respect and kindness to all the peoples, whether they are American or not”, in a meeting with senior aides.

His officials had tougher words. Defence Minister Sultan Hashem Ahmad said Saddam “will emerge victorious and teach the attackers a lesson” if there is a war, while Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan said: “Defeat will be the fate of evil terrorists and dictators among the Americans and Zionists.”

US President George Bush has vowed he is ready to order US military action with or without a UN mandate.

More than 133,000 US troops are now massed in the Gulf region, with over 55,000 stationed in Kuwait and 35,000 sailors and marines aboard warships, a defence official in Washington said.

Britain has deployed 42,000 personnel and an aircraft carrier, while Australia has ordered 2,000 troops and a squadron of F-18s to join the Americans.

Bush told a convention of religious broadcasters Monday: “We will try in every way we can to spare innocent life. The people of Iraq are not our enemies.”

But he said that Saddam was “positioning his military forces within civilian populations in order to shield his military and blame coalition forces for civilian casualties that he has caused. Saddam Hussein regards the Iraqi people as human shields, entirely expendable when their suffering serves his purposes.”

At a later meeting with Australian Prime Minister John Howard, Bush said he was “disappointed” with France for the NATO veto, adding: “I don’t understand that decision.”

The US president has spent the past week on the telephone to Chirac, Putin and the leaders of other countries in an effort to bring them around to his way of thinking, or at least to win a commitment that they would not offer resistance.

But the push to war has proved deeply unpopular with the public almost everywhere except in the United States.—AFP