March 11, 2003	Tuesday	Muharram 7, 1424

WASHINGTON, March 10: US President George Bush on Monday launched an 11th-hour push to win passage of a UN resolution paving the way for an invasion of Iraq, as the White House warned Russia and France not to veto the measure.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer conceded that Russia, which delivered its starkest veto threat to date earlier on Monday, and France could doom the new resolution.

“If they were to veto, which is indeed a possibility, it would be, from a moral point of view, more than a disappointment. It would let down millions of people around the world, in this case in Iraq, who deserve to be free and have a better life,” said Fleischer.

“But we hope that would not be the case,” said the spokesman, who linked the possible vetos to past UN inaction in the face of genocide in Rwanda and Serb violence against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

“The United nations has previously sat on the sidelines as people died and as injustice was done as a result of vetos or veto threats from other nations,” he said.

Asked whether Russo-US ties would suffer as a result of a veto from Moscow, Fleischer replied: “The president would indeed be disappointed if Russia were to veto.”

“The president would look at this as a missed opportunity for Russia to take an important moral stand to defend freedom and to prevent the risk of a massive catastrophe from taking place as a result of Saddam Hussein’s development of weapons of mass destruction,” the spokesman said.

Mr Fleischer took a milder tone towards France, saying its efforts to rally support against Washington’s hard line were “not a surprise. The French have been working against this resolution for a considerable amount of time.”

PHONE DIPLOMACY: The US president telephoned Chinese President Jiang Zemin and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, and was to appeal to a host of other nations, some like Japan not on the UN Security Council, said spokesman Ari Fleischer.

Mr Bush “in his phone calls makes both cases: That Iraq is a threat, that Iraq must be disarmed, that it’s important to remember the lives of the Iraqi people who suffer at the hands of a dictator like Saddam Hussein,” he said.

China, which has veto power in the council, has said it supports continued and enhanced UN weapons inspections over the new resolution, which gives Iraq until March 17 to comply with a UN disarmament ultimatum or face war.—AFP