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| Britain | |
| Blair to stave off backbench revolt | |
| 2003-02-24 | |
| Tony Blair will move to avert a potentially crippling Labour backbench revolt over Iraq this week by heralding a new joint US-UK resolution to be tabled in the next 24 hours as part of "a push for peace". MPs are due to vote on the Iraq crisis on Wednesday and senior backbench Labour MPs predicted it is likely to be the last chance for the Commons to register disapproval of war before British troops go into action in mid-March. It's not a good sign in a parliamentary system when the PM has to meet like this. The United States and Britain will start the countdown to war by tabling a draft resolution at the UN today or tomorrow which they expect to put to the security council for a vote around March 7 or March 10. The simple resolution will refer back to the previous UN resolution 1441 passed in November and declare that Iraq has failed to comply with its terms, so implictly putting Iraq in material breach and open to attack. This is going to fail because the French will veto it. So why not just go ahead and make it explicit? The UN chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, will make a third and possibly final report on the inspection process at the beginning of March. Washington and London believe Mr Blix will report that Iraq is still not in full compliance with resolution 1441. The proposed US-UK timetable attempts to pre-empt French efforts to delay decisions until as late as March 14.
In other words, defecate or decommode. In a statement to MPs tomorrow, the prime minister will again insist that Iraq can avoid war and will vow that he is trying to ensure no action is taken without the support of the UN. Mr Blair hopes the switch in focus to the humanitarian plight of Iraqis is finally winning over doubters. But Labour MPs, including senior figures who have not rebelled so far, plan to express their dissent on Wednesday. The former defence minister, Peter Kilfoyle, said last night: "Wednesday is make your mind up time. I cannot foresee another opportunity to vote before military action starts. Tony Blair is not involved in a push for peace, but a drive for war." He said he would be pressing for the Speaker to ensure that a vote is allowed on an amendment arguing that the case for war is not proven. Not proven? How? Forty-four Labour MPs rebelled on January 22, but opponents of war, such as Labour backbencher Alice Mahon, claimed the rebellion could reach as high as 150. Ms Mahon said: "I think we'll get quite a good vote and that will show that the house is completely divided. It is unprecedented to send our servicemen and women into military action when we're not being invaded or threatened, with that kind of a division in the country." I could easily have this wrong, but there are 410 Labour MP's right now. If 150 revolt, it's all over, as the remaining 260 can't turn back a vote of no confidence in the house unless the other parties come to Tony's rescue. Any Brits here to correct me on this? The Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, Michael Moore, predicted that his party would be tabling an amendment insisting no war should be countenanced without UN backing. That's 53 votes. British officials yesterday pointed to Iraq's unwillingness to meet Mr Blix's demand that it agree to destroy dozens of Samoud 2 long-range missiles. In what could be a test case for Iraqi cooperation, Mr Blix has set the deadline of Saturday for their destruction since they exceed the 150-km (93-mile) range limit set by resolutions adopted at the end of the 1991 Gulf war. UN inspectors have started to "tag" the missiles and their components. Mr Blix has drawn up a checklist of 30 other questions which Iraq must answer soon. Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, said in Ankara yesterday that he was confident Iraq would destroy the missiles. "If they refused to destroy the weapons, the security council will have to make a decision," he said. "I don't see why they would not destroy them." "Please Saddam, don't force us to make a decision!" Mr Blix, in an interview with Time magazine, also appeared to question the undue speed of the US-UK timetable for war. "Eight years of inspections, four years no inspections, and then 11 weeks, and then call it a day? It's a little short," he said. It could be another twelve years and you still wouldn't find anything! His remarks are likely to harden the resolve of the French to demand more time and, in a nightmare scenario for Washington, even table a counter-resolution to the security council. A French diplomatic source told Reuters last night that the French still opposed a second UN security council resolution on Iraq at the moment. And will oppose one forever. Mr Blair talked to Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, on the phone yesterday in an apparent bid to head off any amendments or rival resolutions. But Moscow is keeping its options open, according to a Kremlin statement after the call. I must say, I don't like the way this is going for Tony. | |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #3 I'm not sure about the legal nicities regarding delcaring war, but I'm pretty certain Blair doesn't need a vote in order to sanction it - he can give that order without permission from anybody, that's the PM's sole responsibility (with token approval from the Queen). So there won't be any risk of defeat for Blair on this issue at the hands of parliament. "Mr Blair's spokesman confirmed that on Wednesday MPs will be given another vote on the Iraq crisis. But Downing Street has accepted this vote will be only to approve the action so far taken by the government - not to sanction any future action." (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2793939.stm) Tony should still be around in a couple of weeks. |
| Posted by: Bulldog 2003-02-24 08:32:04 |
| #2 As I understand it, the main reason we went to the UN and and pursued the international diplomacy route was to keep Mr. Blair happy and to get the Europeans on board. Well, Mr. Blair may lose his job soon (resulting in a British withdrawl from Iraq, and probably Afghanistan), the UN has been demonstrated to be useless (big news to some people, apparently), the EU is tanking due to French arrogance (which I suspect is actually good compared to an EU dominated by a Franco-German alliance), NATO itself is ruptured like never before, there's a tremendous split between European and American popular opinion, and it's a virtual certainty that no President of the United States will ever again go to the United Nations for anything that's even slightly important to US national security. There's nothing here I can't live with, since most of our "alliances" are actually parasitical in nature, and I never had the faintest faith in the UN. But I wonder what Mr. Blair thinks of the diplomatic approach now? |
| Posted by: Patrick Phillips 2003-02-24 07:51:49 |
| #1 I prefer "defecate or discommode". It has a nice ring to it. ;-) |
| Posted by: Dar Steckelberg 2003-02-24 07:27:17 |