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Rice warns time is short for UN option
President Bush's national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, said yesterday the US was still willing to seek United Nations authority for military action in Iraq, but insisted that the "diplomatic window" would not stay open very long. Ms Rice would not say how long the US was prepared to wait, other than to repeat the president's mantra that it was a matter of weeks, not months. The US has made similar walkout threats before, ever since Mr Bush reluctantly agreed last September to pursue the UN route in its confrontation with Iraq. The president declared "the game is over" earlier this month. And on Friday, after the UN weapons inspectors' generally positive report on Iraqi compliance, a US official was telling journalists that Washington would take the weekend to reconsider whether it was worth trying to find international support for an attack, "or pursue another option". That certainly sounds like a buzz-phrase. Ms Rice repeated the threat yesterday, saying: "It is time for this to end, enough is enough." But in almost the same breath she said the US was "in a diplomatic window to look for ways to move forward". "We'd like to work with the weasels, really we would, but time's short and I gotta date with history." Despite Washington's history of bluster, there are reasons to believe the "window" is narrowing, and amounts to between two and four weeks. When's the next new moon again? American diplomats said on Friday that Washington was prepared to wait at least for another report by UN inspectors at the end of this month. To mount an attack earlier, having made that commitment, would deepen the anti-American outrage at the UN. I didn't see Ms. Rice on the TV, but somehow I don't imagine her to be shaking in her socks at this thought. But US officials did not commit themselves to another meeting of security council foreign ministers on March 14, as proposed by France. That's past the new moon, guys, and our Secretary of State is going to be busy that, ah, other things. Security council officials suggested on Friday that the US might back a mid-March meeting, if Paris was prepared to support a new resolution authorising the use of force should Iraq not comply by that date. There was no sign over the weekend that such a commitment had been offered. And there won't be. France is completely committed to the current plan of 'non'. The report in yesterday's New York Times that the US was considering a "final round" of tests for Iraqi behaviour appeared to confirm the two-to-four-week timetable. US armed forces are expected to reach peak readiness on about March 8, as helicopters from the leading American air assault force, the 101st Airborne Division, reach the Gulf. Unless they get there earlier, eh Saddam? Preparations to open a northern front from Turkey are also been bogged down. The Turkish parliament only allowed renovation work on ports and air bases to start last week, and is due to vote next week on allowing 40,000 or more US troops into the country. We might not need the whole 40,000 there at once. A report in today's Newsweek magazine says that Turkey had only agreed to provide bases if the US allowed it to send up to 80,000 of its own troops into northern Iraq, under separate command - a move which would be fiercely opposed by the region's Kurdish minority. It was unclear yesterday whether a deal had been struck. Ouch. Fred, Steve, Frank, any word on this? There will be more than 200,000 US and British troops in the Gulf by the end of February, giving General Tommy Franks, who would lead any US invasion, plenty of options. However, analysts said the Pentagon would prefer to have a large force in Turkey, and the 101st Airborne at Gen Franks' disposal, before any attack. Militarily, this would make the optimum times for an attack either early in the second week of March, as soon as US forces are fully in place and when the nights will still be relatively dark, or in the last ten days of the month as the moon begins to fade again. After that, rising temperatures will make fighting increasingly difficult for US troops. The Pentagon insists it could fight in any conditions, but its uniformed officers have made it plain they would rather not wait until the summer. I don't think we'll be fighting in the summer. Posted by: Steve White 2003-02-17 |
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