Diplomacy Efforts on Iraq Meet a Dead End

WASHINGTON —  The diplomacy, supposedly, ends today. The only issue remaining after the hastily organized summit in the Azores is whether the United States will be joined by the United Nations as it goes to war against Iraq. That now appears doubtful.

In a final gesture -- or bluff -- Sunday, the leaders of the United States, Britain and Spain offered the rest of the world one last, 24-hour chance to hop on their bandwagon, which is now rolling ever faster toward military intervention.

If the three leaders cannot quickly rally the required nine votes -- and stave off vetoes -- for their Security Council resolution, which in effect authorizes war, they will drop their bid, U.S. sources said. The ultimatum to the Security Council will then be followed swiftly by another to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, to leave Baghdad or face a punishing onslaught.

U.S., British and Spanish officials were all pessimistic Sunday about the possibility of compromise. Washington might be willing to accept a few days’ delay beyond today’s deadline, they noted, but only if it included an automatic “resort to force” if Iraq did not fully surrender all its weapons of mass destruction -- an idea firmly rejected or challenged by key Security Council members.

“The summit is unlikely to change the U.N. vote in any meaningful way. Over the past week, the undecided countries have hardened their positions,” said Kenneth Pollack, a National Security Council staffer on Iraq for both the Clinton and Bush administrations.

“In part, the U.S. has not done a good job of persuading them,” Pollack said. “But the U.S. has also rejected some countries’ offers of compromise as nonstarters, slapping them in the face. It’ll be hard for any of them to change their votes now.”

Without a last-minute diplomatic miracle, President Bush could address the nation as early as tonight, U.S. officials said. War would then be quite possible by week’s end.

Some analysts charged Sunday that the one-hour summit was largely an attempt to recapture a political and psychological initiative stolen over the last two weeks by naysayers. Others said it was just for show -- to help the leaders of Britain and Spain, where public opinion strongly opposes a war without U.N. support.

“This was an ultimatum to the French, Russians, Germans and the swing six countries to get on board by tomorrow. But at this summit, there was no one from any of those countries to look in the eye. They weren’t serious about going the extra mile for diplomacy,” said Joseph C. Wilson, an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute, who in August 1990, as charge d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, was the last American diplomat to talk with Hussein.

Within the framework outlined by a clearly impatient Bush at the Azores summit, the United Nations faces an awkward choice: The other 12 Security Council members must decide whether to side with the three sponsors of the controversial resolution or stand with the French -- and, implicitly, with Hussein.

“France showed their cards,” Bush said almost contemptuously at a news conference after the summit. “They said they were going to veto anything that held Saddam to account.”

Alternatives now seem out of the question. The war troika virtually ignored a call by France, Russia and Germany for a Security Council session today to discuss bringing the 15 foreign ministers together to find a “realistic” deadline for disarmament. It was left dangling as almost irrelevant.

Indeed, talk of any deadline beyond today appears to be over.

“We have had timelines. We have had deadlines. We have had benchmarks. The problem is, Iraq is not complying,” Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

Also noticeably missing from the Azores summit was any discussion of the U.N. weapons inspections.

Baghdad has invited chief inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei back to Baghdad. Pending Iraq’s willingness to provide “some significant steps forward,” Blix sounded interested. But such a visit now appears moot.

“It’s very clear that inspections are now over,” Wilson said.

In a telling reflection of the participants’ priorities, the tenor of talks in the Azores seemed to reflect plans for the future -- building a post-Hussein government -- as much as the task of disarming the old one.

“Iraq has the potential to be a great nation,” Bush said after the one-hour summit.

“Iraq’s liberation would be the beginning, not the end, of our commitment to its people. We will supply humanitarian relief, bring the economic sanctions to a swift close, work for the long-term recovery of Iraq’s economy. We will make sure that Iraq’s natural resources are used for the benefit of their owners, the Iraqi people,” he said.

The summit also sought to redefine the debating points in the final stage of the showdown with Iraq, Pollack said.

“They said the issue is not war or peace but what kind of world you want to live in: a world where the U.N. can’t do the hard things and dictators are allowed to do whatever they want, or a world where the U.N. can be a vehicle for international security and dictators are held accountable for their actions,” he said.

The Bush administration Sunday also began redefining the problem. Ranking officials portrayed France as the obstacle to disarming Hussein -- dating back years, not just this time around -- rather than as the leading opponent of war.

In distinctly undiplomatic language, Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday that it is now “difficult” to take the French seriously on the subject of Hussein.

“In ‘95, when there was an effort to pass a resolution finding him in material breach, France opposed it. In ‘96, when there was an effort to pass a resolution condemning Hussein for his slaughter of Kurds, France opposed it. In ‘97, when there was an effort to block travel by his intelligence and military officials, France opposed it,” Cheney said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“In ‘98, France announced he was free of all weapons of mass destruction -- something nobody believed. And in ‘99, they opposed the creation of the existing inspection regime that they now want to place their total faith in to disarm Saddam Hussein. Given that pattern of behavior, it’s difficult for us to believe that 30 days or 60 more days are going to change anything.”

French President Jacques Chirac countered Sunday on CBS’s “60 Minutes” that inspections were still producing results, with more Iraqi arms destroyed daily.

“The inspectors believe ... that there is a possibility of reaching the objective [of disarmament] without a war,” he said.

But after the Azores summit, the movement is clearly in another direction.