March 24, 2008	Monday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 15, 1429

NEW YORK, March 23: The Bush administration threatened and cajoled its allies, including Pakistan, in the run-up to Iraqi invasion in a bid to seek support for its proposed military action in the UN Security Council in face of a veto threat by President Jacques Chirac of France, says an upcoming book by a Chilean diplomat.

Ambassador Heraldo Munoz, who was Chile’s ambassador to the United Nations, sat on the UN Security Council as one of the 10 non-permanent members along with Angola, Cameroon, Guinea, Mexico and Pakistan, the six countries which opposed the US position to invade Iraq.

In his book “A Solitary War: A Diplomat’s Chronicle of the Iraq War and Its

Lessons,” set for publication next month. Mr Munoz says that US President

George Bush personally pushed the presidents of the six holdout countries to support the US position in the 15-member Security Council. The US wanted to show the world how isolated was the French government in its opposition to the invasion of Iraq, but it failed.

The book was made available to the Washington Post which published excerpts on Sunday.

Mr Munoz says that on March 14, 2003, less than one week before the eventual invasion, Chile hosted a meeting of diplomats from the six undecided governments to discuss its proposal. But US ambassador John D. Negroponte and then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell moved quickly to quash the initiative, warning their governments that the effort was viewed as “an unfriendly act” designed to isolate the United States. The diplomats received calls from their governments ordering them to “leave the meeting immediately,” Munoz writes.

In the months leading up to the US-led invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration threatened trade reprisals against countries which withheld their support, spied on its allies, and pressed for the recall of UN envoys that resisted US pressure to endorse the war, according to the book.

“In the aftermath of the invasion, allies loyal to the United States were rejected, mocked and even punished” for their refusal to back a UN resolution authorising military action against Saddam Hussein’s government, Munoz wrote.