PARIS, Oct 28: French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin has called upon the UN security council —- and indirectly the United States — to “be responsible” and not approve any resolution that would authorize the recourse to a go-it-alone attack on Iraq.
“Let’s be united,” demands Mr de Villepin, “and let’s be responsible.”
The call for the United States to “dissipate all ambiguity” with regard to its projected resolution was made by Mr de Villepin in an interview with the Le Figaro newspaper.
The French foreign minister, who with President Jacques Chirac has been in the forefront of efforts to persuade Washington not to undertake a unilateral attack on Baghdad, used the interview to propose that members of the security council meet soon at the ministerial level “to lift the obstacles” to a resolution that he feels must be adopted unanimously and “rapidly”.
He made it clear that in no way would France lift its opposition to a resolution introduced last week by the United States which effectively would allow it to carry out a unilateral attack on Iraq.
A source in Mr de Villepin’s entourage goes so far as to say that the United States is intent on “pushing through” its own resolution this week, and this largely for reasons of domestic politics as US voters go to the polls next Tuesday (Nov 5) in congressional elections.
Mr de Villepin tells Le Figaro that security council members had already agreed to a plan with regard to Iraq, which would have seen in a first phase the voting of a resolution that would have defined the precise conditions under which a team of UN inspectors would be sent to Iraq.
“If we’re going to be effective today, but also in the long-term,” says Mr de Villepin, “then our action must benefit from a legitimacy that is incontestabale and this in the eyes of everybody.”
DEFENCE MINISTER: French Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie returned from her weekend visit to Saudi Arabia convinced that she too had managed to pass the message that if force could be envisaged with regard to Iraq, it would be only as a last resort.
One positive note of the visit to Riyadh, says an adviser to Mrs Alliot-Marie, was her meeting with Prince Abdullah and Defence Minister Prince Sultan.
“We managed to hammer home the point,” says the adviser, “that there existed opposition (at the UN Security Council) to a possible US go-it-alone strike on Baghdad. The Saudis now seem reassured that there exist international norms. Until now, they seemed under the impression that if the United States decided to impose its point of view, then that was the only avenue possible.”