NEW YORK, Jan 22: Saying that Pakistan has little sympathy for Saddam Hussein of Iraq who has supported India against Pakistan on Kashmir dispute, Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri, cautioned the United States to give time to the UN weapons inspectors to complete their job before embarking on any military action against Baghdad.
“If the inspectors say they want some time, I think that time should be given,” the Foreign minister said in an interview with the New York Times on Tuesday.
Mr Kasuri said it is crucial for Pakistan, which just joined the Council on Jan 1, to have an air-tight case against Iraq to present at home to avoid a destabilizing anti-American backlash.
“We have to present this in a way that people know it is not a selective application of Security Council resolutions,” he told the paper.
He pointed to several decades-old resolutions seeking a solution to Pakistan’s bitter fight with India over the territory of Kashmir, which he said have not been enforced the way Washington wants to enforce resolutions on Iraq.
His country, he said, feels no sympathy for President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, who has lent his backing to India in the Kashmir dispute. “Nobody has anything to do with Saddam,” he said.
Pakistan remains keen to preserve strong relations with the Bush administration, he said, but is in a “particularly difficult situation” because of the tensions created in the Muslim country by its support for the United States war to topple the Taliban in Afghanistan. “When you talk of time, it doesn’t mean unlimited time, so that everybody will forget about the situation in Iraq,” Mr Kasuri told the paper.
It may be pointed out that most members of the UN Security Council are reluctant to see any military action against Iraq until the UN weapons inspectors complete their job. They also want a second resolution explicitly authorizing war against Iraq.
On Monday France bluntly told the United States it would not support an attack on Iraq in the coming weeks, a position diplomats said was shared by most of the 15 UN Security Council members.
French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, at a press conference hinted at using his veto against any resolution authorizing military force. “We believe that nothing today justifies envisaging military action,” he said.
Mr Villepin was careful to distinguish between supporting force now and in the future, which he did not rule out. His position, diplomats said, reflected apprehension among a number of council members that the Bush administration wanted support for war next week, choosing a timetable based on when the weather was best for the US military.
At the meeting of Council foreign ministers here on Monday, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell met considerable resistance from three other permanent, veto-bearing Council members — China, Russia and especially France — to military action against Iraq in coming weeks.
The UN weapons inspectors will give a report to the Security Council on Jan 27, and American officials have said that they might use that event to make their case for war. However, at a luncheon hosted by the French Foreign Minister with 12 other ministers, Mr Powell also heard much reluctance from the 10 non-permanent members, diplomats here said. Many of them argued that the inspections are just starting to work to pressure Iraq to disclose its illegal weapons, diplomats said.
They said that without a “smoking gun” to prove Baghdad’s defiance, they would have a hard time at this point convincing skeptics at home that war is justified. “We still have to work with public opinion.”