March 28, 2003	Friday	Muharram 24, 1424

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UNITED NATIONS, March 27: Arab nations on Thursday abandoned plan to ask the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution demanding an immediate withdrawal of foreign forces from Iraq since they lacked votes, diplomats here said.

“It does not look good,” one Arab diplomat said, referring to the tough requirement of getting nine “yes” votes without a veto being exercised if a resolution is to win UNSC’s approval.

Calling for a vote, only to see a resolution defeated, would risk legitimizing the US-British invasion of Iraq, the envoys said.

“It would be legitimizing what is going on. That is not exactly what we want to achieve in the Security Council,” one Arab envoy observed.

Arab nations had initially planned to present a draft resolution demanding an immediate halt to the war at the close of a two-day emergency Security Council debate on the war that was expected to wrap up later on Thursday night.

Meanwhile, on the second day of UNSC’s emergency session, most nations condemned the US-led war on Iraq which was not authorized by the council and is likely to cause an unprecedented humanitarian disaster.

The debate was open to all 191 UN member-nations, not just the 15 Security Council members.

Of the 60 delegates or thereabouts who spoke until Thursday afternoon just a handful backed the US-British position.

Speaking at Wednesday’s session, Iraqi UN Ambassador Mohammed Aldouri accused the United States and Britain of inflicting thousands of casualties on his country, and demanded of the Security Council to crack down on their “naked aggression.”

Aldouri said he found it bizarre the Security Council had met in closed session to begin debating humanitarian aid for Iraq before taking up the question of the invasion itself.

“This war should not have been started in the first place,” said Malaysian Ambassador Rastam Mohd Isa, who heads the UN group of non-aligned nations.

On Wednesday, the Iraqi ambassador said: “This colonial Anglo-Saxon aggression is a naked defiance of the will of the international community and its organizations.

Iranian ambassador Javad Zarif dismissed the implicit claim in the military code-name Operation Iraqi Freedom, launched to topple the regime of President Saddam Hussein

“Democracy is not something that can be imposed by tanks and helicopter gunships,” Zarif said.

“The Iraqi people may resent their government, but as they have shown in the past several days, they do not accept their liberation through foreign occupation.”

Zarif accused both Iraq and the United States of violating the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war.

“All countries, be they big or small, benefit from the principles of international law,” he said.

Ambassador of Turkey Umit Pamir, said that Iran and Turkey — which both border on Iraq — were threatened by a flood of refugees.

“We cannot allow an influx of refugees into Turkey to take place as it did in 1991,” Pamir said, referring to the US-led military campaign to expel invading Iraqi forces from Kuwait.

In a blistering attack on Iraq, the Kuwaiti Ambassador Mohammed Abulhasan said the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had only itself to blame for the war.

It had persistently rejected council resolutions dating from 1991, when “the Kuwaiti people languished under a brutal and abhorrent Iraqi occupation for seven months,” he said.

Washington’s UN ambassador walked out of a Security Council debate on Iraq on Thursday after Baghdad’s ambassador said the United States and Britain wanted to exterminate the Iraqi people.

“I did sit through quite a long part of what he had to say, but I think I’d heard enough after a certain amount of time,” US Ambassador John Negroponte told reporters outside the Security Council chamber after walking out.