WASHINGTON, Sept 9: The United States faced new international objections on Monday to unilateral military action against Iraq as President Jacques Chirac revealed that France was drafting a two-stage plan that could lead to UN authorization of military force against Baghdad.
According to British press reports, US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair will give the United Nations a “last chance” to resolve the Iraqi problem peacefully.
Blair will challenge the United Nations to reassert its moral authority by giving Iraqi President Saddam Hussein “one last chance” to readmit weapons inspectors before facing US-led military action, the Independent reported following a weekend Camp David summit between the two allies.
In an interview published in the New York Times, Chirac said that under the two-stage plan being drafted by France, a security council resolution would give Iraq a three-week deadline for readmitting UN weapons inspectors “without restrictions or preconditions”.
If Saddam Hussein rejects their return or hampers their work, he said, a second resolution should be passed on whether to use military force.
But Chirac told the Times that while he would like to see a new regime in Baghdad, any attempt to oust Saddam without the backing of a Security Council resolution would create chaos in global affairs.
Chirac described the Bush administration doctrine of pre-emptive military action in its “fight against terrorism” as “extraordinarily dangerous”.
In Wellington, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark also called for any military action against Iraq to be under UN mandate.
If the UN did mandate action, New Zealand would try to make a contribution, she said, while noting that the army was being re-equipped and needed time to train its personnel.
“We don’t wish to see unilateral intervention in Iraq. We think decisions about Iraq should be taken at UN level,” Clark said.
Japan, too, supported calls for weapons inspectors to be allowed back into Iraq before the United States launched a military strike and suggested Washington would be unwise to act alone.
“It is important for the international community to step up pressure on Iraq to admit nuclear weapons inspectors and stop its development of weapons of mass destruction,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said.
“In the current situation, now is the time to consider many things before a direct US attack on Iraq,” Fukuda said.
“It is important to have the international community get-together to have Iraq change its behaviour,” he added, hours before Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was due to depart for a five-day visit to the United States that will include a meeting with Bush.
Canadian Deputy Prime Minister John Manley said his country would not support a US military operation if it were aimed at toppling its government and Baghdad’s “terrorist connection” was not clearly established.
“We have not signed on for the change-the-regime movement in Iraq,” he told CTV television on the eve of a US-Canadian working summit in Detroit, Michigan, on Monday.—AFP