WASHINGTON: A top US Senate Democrat urged President George W. Bush on Sunday “to outsmart the French” in their opposition to a new UN resolution on Iraq by having the Security Council decide when to turn control back to Iraqis.

“I think the French are playing a gambit here,” US Sen. Joseph Biden told the “Fox News Sunday” programme. “That doesn’t mean that we can’t out-negotiate them.”

Biden, the ranking Democrat on the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Bush should first get Russian President Vladimir Putin on board when he goes this week to the General Assembly in New York.

With US troops under near-daily attack and costs soaring, Bush wants a new UN resolution creating a multinational force for Iraq. But France and Germany have argued a US-written draft resolution does not cede enough control to the United Nations nor transfer Iraqi sovereignty to its people quickly enough.

“Why not go to the Security Council and say to the French, ‘OK here’s the deal, we’ll let the Security Council make the decision when to turn over all control to the Iraqis when they are ready, and we’ll let that be done by the Security Council,’” Biden, a Delaware Democrat, said.

“Now we box France. France is the only country in the world, with a little lip service from Germany, saying turn over power that they cannot handle in the next three months.

“So why aren’t we able to outsmart the French in terms of the world stage and get the control of this issue by bringing the responsibility back to the world so we don’t pay the whole freight,” he added.

Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, another member of the Senate panel, agreed the French “have been difficult” but said they should be included in the effort to stabilize Iraq.

Sen. John Edwards, a Democratic presidential candidate from North Carolina, told CBS’ “Face the Nation” that “other countries are not going to give us their troops, give us their financial resources, unless they’re allowed to participate in the decision-making.”

And Sen. Christopher Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, said getting international troops and money would “take the administration giving up some of the control ... certainly on the political-economic reconstruction phase.”—Reuters