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Threatens veto Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.msnbc.com/news/842500.asp?vts=022820030600http://www.msnbc.com/news/842500.asp?vts=022820030600
Russia threatens to veto resolution
NBC, MSNBC AND NEWS SERVICES
Feb. 28 — The United States suffered a significant setback Friday in its attempts to win U.N. backing for military action in Iraq when Russia’s foreign minister said Moscow was prepared to veto a war resolution “in the interests of international stability.”
SPEAKING IN BEIJING Ivanov, said Moscow “does not support any resolution which could directly or indirectly open the way to an armed resolution of the Iraq problem.”
“Russia has the right to a veto in the U.N. Security Council and will use it if it is necessary in the interests of international stability,” he said at a news conference.
A Kremlin source told NBC News that Moscow was serious about using their veto if the war resolution backed by the United States, Britain and Spain came to a vote.
“We are strongly against against the document that would start a war and President (Vladimir) Putin has said it before, he reserves the right to use a veto,” the Kremlin official told NBC on condition of anonymity.
Russia has joined France and Germany in trying to persuade the Security Council to give Iraqi President Saddam Hussein more time to comply with U.N. demands that he destroy the country’s chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. China and Russia issued a joint declaration Thursday saying war with Iraq “can and should be avoided” and appealing for more time for U.N. weapons inspectors there.
A U.S. source in Moscow told NBC the United States “believes there is a disconnect between the Kremlin and the foreign ministry.”
The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, added that Putin’s chief of staff, Alexander Voloshin, who was in Washington meeting U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and President Bush, “was much more supportive of the American position than what we are getting in the foreign ministry.”
“We continue to believe Russia would abstain, not veto” a resolution clearing the way for war if it comes to a council vote, the official told NBC.
POSSIBLE WIGGLE ROOM?
Friday, Ivanov appeared to leave Russian leaders room to compromise, stressing that “if you use the veto power, you should fully understand the responsibilities of it before using it. It can only be used for international peace and stability.”
But his comments represented a serious setback for U.S. efforts to win U.N. approval for military action, which had seemed to be gathering momentum after details of a highly anticipated report by chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix emerged Thursday.
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While the report, which the Security Council is expected to receive later Friday, welcomes new information recently provided to inspectors, it also sharply criticizes Iraq for failing to make greater efforts to cooperate with investigators, according to excerpts of a draft obtained by Reuters.
“The results in terms of disarmament have been very limited so far,” Blix said in the draft. “It is hard to understand why a number of the measures which are now being taken could not have been initiated earlier. If they had been taken earlier, they might have borne fruit by now.”
U.N. diplomats have said the report would play a key role in their determination about military action against Baghdad. As they awaited final translations Thursday, diplomats wrestled with the U.S.-backed resolution and a counterproposal that would extend inspections.
Bush said this week that while the United States still hoped Baghdad would meet U.N. demands to disarm, he did not expect it to do so, in which case “we are prepared to disarm Iraq by force.”
NEW OFFER ON MISSILES
The draft report noted that Iraq had not begun to destroy dozens of its Al Samoud II missiles, which it was ordered to do by Saturday. Later in the day, Blix’s office said it had received a letter from Baghdad agreeing "in principle" to destroy the missiles and related components.
It could not immediately be determined how the final report might change to reflect the letter. In a two-sentence statement it released late Thursday afternoon, Blix’s office said it still had to “clarify” the offer with officials in Baghdad; Saddam suggested in an interview earlier this week with CBS that Iraq would not destroy the missiles.
The United States said again Thursday, however, that the question was irrelevant.
“The rockets are just the tip of the iceberg. The only question at hand is total, complete disarmament, which he is refusing to do,” Bush told reporters in the Oval Office.
In making a case for war, Washington has asserted that Saddam has no intention of fully disarming and poses a threat to the region.
BLIX REPORT
Blix’s report was originally scheduled for delivery to the Security Council on Saturday, but U.N. officials told NBC News that it would be filed a day early, about 5 p.m. ET Friday.
The Security Council has been locked in debate for weeks between Washington’s insistence that Saddam would respond only to military force and a campaign by France, Russia and Germany to give him more time to comply with U.N. demands.
Ambassadors juggled two competing resolutions Thursday, one backed by the United States and Britain that would lay the groundwork for war and the other by the three dissident nations that would prolong inspections until July 1 at the earliest.
Smaller nations on the council said Thursday that they were losing patience with the long-simmering dispute. Chile’s ambassador, Juan Gabriel Valdes, pleaded with the five veto-wielding members of the council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — to come to a consensus.
French President Jacques Chirac has led opposition to U.S. plans alongside Germany, but he has come under criticism at home from lawmakers within his own party who fear that the stance will badly hurt relations with the United States.
Other evidence this week also suggested that Bush was gaining ground, including signals that Mexico had changed its strong anti-war stance and was preparing to back the U.S.-driven resolution.
Some undecided council countries, such as Chile, were pushing for a Canadian compromise aimed at reconciling the differences between Washington and Paris by giving Iraq only until the end of March to complete a list of disarmament tasks that inspectors are compiling.
Washington has rejected the Canadian proposal, which State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Wednesday “only procrastinates on a decision we all should be prepared to take.”
OTHER DEVELOPMENTS
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld rejected an estimate by the U.S. Army chief this week that several hundred thousand troops would be needed for a post-Saddam occupying force in Iraq. “The idea that it would take several hundred thousand U.S. forces is far off the mark,” Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon news conference. The United States has deployed about 200,000 troops in the Persian Gulf region.
Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief U.N. inspector of Iraq’s nuclear weapons programs, said Thursday in an interview with Newsweek that “we haven’t seen any area where they have declined to cooperate with us.”
Arab foreign ministers gathered in Egypt to try to forge a united stand against a war, which some members said was all but inevitable. “Whatever the threats are, we should work until the last minute and exert efforts to avoid it,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher told reporters.
NBC’s Andrea Mitchell and Tammy Kupperman in Washington, Linda Fasulo at the United Nations, Dana Lewis, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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