March 9, 2003	Sunday	Muharram 5, 1424

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MOSCOW, March 8: Russia will block the passage of a second UN Security Council resolution on Iraq, doing “everything it can” to prevent it passing, a top foreign ministry official said here on Saturday.

Deputy Foreign Minister Yury Fedotov said Russia would block an amended draft resolution setting Iraq a March 17 deadline to disarm or face military action, “doing everything it can not to let the resolution pass in the UN Security Council”, the Interfax news agency said.

The amendment, presented at the Security Council on Friday, would have the UN declare that Iraq will be deemed to have failed to disarm “unless, on or before March 17, the Council concludes that Iraq has demonstrated full, unconditional, immediate and active cooperation” with UN inspectors.

Questioned as to whether Russia would use its right of veto, Fedotov said that how the amendment would be blocked was a “technical point”.

The draft “could fail to attract a majority of votes” among the 15 Security Council members, but “even if it does, it won’t pass because Russia, France, Germany and China are extremely negative towards it and will not allow its adoption”, he said on return to Moscow from the UN headquarters, in New York.

The new draft, drawn up by Britain and backed by the United States, “resembles an ultimatum and sets impossible conditions for Iraq”, Mr Fedotov said.

He added that Russia opposed the draft “because it leads to war, the termination of inspections and could trigger unpredictable consequences”.

Earlier, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov told Russian media that the draft resolution was “unjustified” and “dangerous”.

In interviews broadcast on Saturday on Russia’s state television channels, Mr Ivanov said an ultimatum was “unjustified, particularly now that the heads of the inspection teams have requested several months to complete their work”.

He told the ITAR-TASS news agency that there was “still a chance for a political resolution and we think it would be wrong and dangerous to ignore it. The other way is fraught not only with a high toll in human lives, but serious international consequences as well”.

Chief UN inspector Hans Blix and IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) head Mohamed ElBaradei “reaffirmed that the inspection mechanism is working. It can therefore achieve the objective set for it, namely the disarmament of Iraq”.

“Russia strongly advocates further work by the inspectors,” Ivanov noted on television.

Therefore, Russia, “like several other countries, considers the (proposed) resolution pointless — it would not serve to reach a political settlement of the Iraqi situation”, he stressed.

“We hope that the countries that proposed the draft resolution will understand that the path of a political settlement may not be easy, but it is reliable (and) guarantees peace in a tense region,” he said.

Ivanov repeated his view expressed at Friday’s Security Council meeting that “there is a realistic possibility of a political settlement”.

The speeches made in the Security Council debate indicated that “the adoption of the new resolution is unlikely”, he commented.

US President George Bush has said he is prepared to launch an invasion of Iraq even without UN Security Council approval.

However, British Prime Minister Tony Blair is anxious to secure a UN mandate for the planned attack, which could take place soon after the March 17 deadline, as British public opinion is currently opposed to an attack without UN backing, although it would swing behind a military campaign approved by the Security Council.

The UN Security Council is expected to vote on the draft resolution next week. —AFP