March 9, 2003	Sunday	Muharram 5, 1424

WASHINGTON-MEXICO CITY-JOHANNESBURG: Mixed messages on Friday came from the so-called “middle six” members of the security council, who are wavering on whether to support a resolution authorising war.

In order to obtain a second resolution, Britain and America must garner nine votes out of the 15 available on the security council. That means persuading five of the six wavering states to come on board.

The six are Mexico, Chile, Angola, Cameroon, Guinea and Pakistan.

Speaking after the inspectors’ presentations, Mexico’s foreign minister Luis Ernesto Derbez underlined its own discomfort in its position by pleading for a new compromise that would forge consensus — thus sparing it from having to take sides.

“Mexico considers that we can be firm through peaceful means,” Mr Derbez said, during an impassioned defence of multi-lateralism. The council should “explore possible ways and take advantage of every single opportunity to solve this issue in a peaceful way”, he said.

Earlier, the Mexican president Vicente Fox said he had sensed a new flexibility in President George Bush’s stance during a telephone call between the two leaders on Thursday. He called on “the other extreme” — implying France and Germany — to join the search for compromise.

At home, Mexican officials have spent the week giving out similarly ambiguous messages, urging “peace” but insisting on “the urgent disarmament of a tyrant”, in an effort to please both an overwhelmingly anti-war public opinion and the US, Mexico’s most important trade partner by far.

If the big anti-war powers can be persuaded to abstain, US pressure on Mexico would be hard to resist, as its vote would suddenly become crucial. But even as reports suggested that Russia might be willing to consider a compromise, there was no sign of movement from France, a fact the middle six may interpret as reducing the pressure on them and giving them more time to remain indecisive.

Chile’s post-presentation speech contained a strong condemnation of Iraq’s failure to fully cooperate with inspectors, hinting at a move towards Washington’s corner, but the Chilean foreign minister, Soledad Alvear, insisted a peaceful solution remained viable.

“The statements we have heard lead us to believe that a solution that reconciles a yearning for peace and disarmament is still possible,” she said.

In general, Chile’s socialist president Ricardo Lagos is in a slightly less desperate political dilemma than his Mexico counterpart, and thus he is still believed to be less likely to buckle if a resolution clearly giving a green light to military action is put to the vote.

Pakistani officials, awaiting the formal statement of their UN ambassador, declined to indicate whether Islamabad was moving closer to supporting the US. Involvement in an American-led military invasion of Iraq would cause enormous domestic tensions for President Pervez Musharraf, but US diplomats have hinted recently that they believe Pakistan can be won over.

Georges Chikoti, Angola’s deputy foreign minister, said his country welcomed Saddam Hussein’s limited cooperation, but called it “relatively insufficient...in my delegation’s view, this posture by the Iraqi authorities is in no way assisting us in our mission and the discharge of our mandate”.

Angola was expected to continue playing for time, not wanting to come off the fence sooner than needed. The French foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, will visit Luanda next week, suggesting he thinks the Angolan government could yet be swayed to line up behind those wanting to avert war.

Some observers believe that Luanda has already made up its mind to back the US but, not wanting to offend anti-war African allies, needs to go through the motions of digesting the latest findings by the weapons inspectors.

There was enough evidence in the Blix report to allow Guinea to continue hardening its stance on Iraq, suggesting that this waverer is edging towards the US and Britain.

Nothing short of a Blix love letter to Saddam would have impeded Guinea’s apparently hawkish drift, said one analyst.

Like Angola, however, the Guineans are unlikely to make a formal decision until the eleventh hour.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.