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MOSCOW, Feb 6: The presidents of Russia and France agreed in a telephone conversation on Thursday that a diplomatic solution should be found to the problem of Iraqi disarmament, the Kremlin said.
“Having discussed the outcome of the latest UN Security Council session on Iraq, the leaders of the two countries noted coinciding positions in favour of using political and diplomatic methods to solve the Iraq problem...,” a Kremlin statement said.
Putin, who will fly on Monday to Paris for talks with Chirac, agreed with the French leader that the two sides “must continue to closely cooperate” in their efforts to avert a war, the statement said.
In Moscow, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Russia saw no reason to change its position on Iraq after analysing US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s report on Baghdad.
“There is no reason to change Russia’s position,” Ivanov told reporters.
“The first analysis of this information shows that there is no significant new proof,” said Ivanov.
Russia, France and China are trying to convince the United States and Britain — the other two UN Security Council members with veto power — to use the council in resolving their standoff with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Ivanov said on Wednesday that “one or several” more UN Security Council resolutions may be required before the council authorizes the use of force.
France has also said it supports a second resolution, although it did not rule supporting force should Saddam fail to actively cooperate with inspections.
SCEPTICAL VIEW: Russians took a sceptical view on Thursday of new US “evidence” that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction while still conceding that global sentiment was shifting in favour of strikes against Baghdad.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Wednesday presented the UN Security Council with declassified information that he said proved Iraqi leaders were “concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction”.
His briefing led Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov to issue a prepared statement in New York declaring that the burden of proof on disarmament was now lying squarely on the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
And both state and private media in Moscow stuck to an often caustic line.
“The United States failed to achieve its main goal — to win new allies,” declared Russia’s state-run Rossiya television network in a morning news bulletin.
“After the UN Security Council session, the balance of power among nations who are for and against the use of force remained the same,” it said.
Vremya Novostei daily — which media analysts suspect has close ties to President Vladimir Putin’s administration — suggested Powell’s report had mostly succeeded in splitting the world into two camps.
“Powell’s speech completely splintered the international community,” the paper said in a front-page banner headline.
“Powell spoke colourfully but not very convincingly, even though he spoke for over an hour,” it opined.
The paper said Powell had demonstrated that Washington “knows about the (Iraqi arms programme) but at the same time cannot show where the weapons really are.”
Vedomosti business daily concluded Powell’s proof “remains, as before, indirect.”
But it noted his speech had caused the euro to slide slightly against the dollar — which it interpreted as a sign of weakening European resistance to a US-led military campaign.
Russia has been treading a careful diplomatic line over Iraq, between its close alliance with the US-led “war on terror” and Soviet-era ties to Baghdad which include massive investments in the country’s oil industry.
Moscow argues that a new UN resolution is necessary to win global legitimacy for an attack on Iraq. It also insists that a new UN vote is required by the most recent UN Security Council vote on Iraqi disarmament — resolution 1441 — which was approved unanimously by Council members.—AFP
