UNITED NATIONS: Missing: one soft-spoken, full-bearded Mauritian ambassador with independent views. Last seen leaving a Security Council meeting without throwing his full support behind the US resolution on Iraq. May have run afoul of perceived US economic pressures in the diplomatic arena.

Mauritius recalled its UN ambassador, Jagdish Koonjul, on Friday for not accurately conveying his government’s pro-American stance in the Security Council debate over how to disarm Iraq, a senior official from the Indian Ocean island nation said this week.

The White House was so concerned that Mauritius was not squarely behind Washington on the resolution that it recently sent a formal warning to the capital. Mauritius’ response was swift and clear — Koonjul didn’t show up for his Friday meetings at the United Nations because he was packing to go home.

“We support the US,” said Foreign Minister Anil Goyan — just as the United States supported Mauritius to become a rotating council member. “Our position is not neutral.”

For both Mauritius and the United States, more than diplomatic harmony is at stake. Mauritius’ concern over solidarity with the United States may well have an economic subtext. Some Mauritian officials fear that Koonjul’s equivocal stance on the resolution could cost them access to the US market under a recent trade programme that explicitly requires support of US foreign policy.

The 2000 African Growth and Opportunity Act, which provides trade benefits to 35 sub-Saharan countries, stipulates that recipients must not “engage in activities that undermine Unites States national security or foreign policy interests.” Although the program was a Clinton administration initiative, it illustrates a growing trend of linking economic issues with Washington’s foreign policy objectives.

“The new American trade agenda serves US security interests,” US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick wrote in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece Monday. “Ultimately, free trade is about freedom. This value is at the heart of our larger reform and development agenda.”

Trade expert Jagdish Bhagwati, a professor at Columbia University, said that while Washington is increasingly using trade for noneconomic purposes such as improving labour standards and pushing democracy, the demand for political support is usually not so explicit.

“It’s a rather naked exercise of political linkage,” he said. “It’s like ‘baksheesh diplomacy.’ We’re telling trade partners, ‘We will let you have market access provided you do the following.’”

Mauritius, an island off the east coast of Africa, isn’t the only Security Council member subject to the political requirements. Council members Cameroon and Guinea also receive trade benefits under the same act, putting these three Francophone nations in the cross-fire of French and US lobbying efforts at the United Nations.

The United States has formally presented a resolution calling for “severe consequences” if Iraq fails to cooperate with weapons inspectors. France, Russia and others are trying to ensure that the new proposal does not automatically authorize the United States and partners to use force against Iraq without council approval.

Nearly two months of negotiations have involved intense pressure on all 15 Security Council members, but the United States is hoping that a refined draft to be presented Wednesday will win wide agreement.

Mauritian Ambassador Koonjul had been carefully noncommittal at the United Nations — so much so that at one point, France and the United States both counted Mauritius as supporting the other side. While that stance elevated Mauritius’ status as a key swing vote in the council, it didn’t go down well at home.

“Our position on this issue is very clear,” Goyan said in a telephone interview Monday with the Los Angeles Times. “If there is consensus, we will go along. If there is no consensus, we will support the United States and United Kingdom. The ambassador has been recalled for not following strictly the instructions that were given him.”

Using aid as both incentive and arm-twister isn’t a new diplomatic practice. In the 1990 Security Council vote authorizing the Persian Gulf War, Washington offered nearly every developing country on the council economic aid packages — and cut Yemen’s entire $70-million foreign aid package after that country voted against it. But the economic aspect to negotiations over this resolution is more overt than ever. —Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) Los Angeles Times