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| Iraq | |||||
| French vow to veto ’war by timetable’ | |||||
| 2003-03-03 | |||||
| Tony Blair's problems over Iraq deepened yesterday when France and rebel Labour MPs said that Saddam Hussein's decision to destroy some al-Samoud missiles showed the UN inspections regime was working. I think we all saw this coming. As the Prime Minister continued his telephone diplomacy in an attempt to win the support of other countries, Dominique de Villepin, the French Foreign Minister, widened the gulf between Paris and London by accusing the US and Britain of making "war on a timetable". "You cannot say 'I want Saddam Hussein to disarm' and at the same time when he is disarming say they're not doing what they should," he told the BBC's Breakfast with Frost programme: 10 missiles run over so far. There's a lot left. M. de Villepin dismissed Mr Blair's comparison between the Iraq crisis and the appeasement of Hitler in the 1930s. "We are not a pacifist country," he said. Spew! "We are ready to take full responsibility. And, we said, if the use of force at one point is absolutely needed, then of course we might take these decisions. "Then again, we might not. We are French, you know!" "But the question is – and sometimes at night I wake up thinking [it] — have we tried everything? France says no ... Are we going to oppose a second resolution? Yes."
Tony might need the Tories.
So the Parliament also has a Strom Thurmond! Chris Smith, a former cabinet minister, said that dismantling al-Samoud 2 missiles showed that the inspections process was starting to work. "If it's working, let it carry on working. Don't truncate it, don't cut it short," he said on GMTV's Sunday programme. Care to explain, Chris, just how it was that the 'inspections process' got to work this far? But Mr Smith "sensed" that Mr Blair had already made up his mind to take military action. If Britain went to war without a new UN resolution, a "lot more" MPs than voted against the Government last week would voice their concerns in the division lobby. And Tony might go. Mr Blair spoke about the Iraq crisis yesterday with Ricardo Lagos, the President of Chile, a members of the 15-strong UN Security Council yet to declare its position. The Prime Minister also spoke to two European leaders, Anders Fogh Rasmussen of Denmark and Jan Peter Balkenende of the Netherlands. Downing Street insisted that Iraq's move on missiles "falls several miles short of the full, immediate and unconditional compliance" demanded by the UN. British ministers were furious at M. de Villepin's intervention, saying privately that it would "play into Saddam's hands". Almost seems ... coordinated, doesn't it? Charles Kennedy, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, said: "Are we really arguing at this stage, before the UN process is complete, that the best thing to do is to start slaughtering people in their thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, as well as losing British and American and Australian lives in the process? I don't think so." Sounds like he's reading the script from the Afghanistan invasion. I'm waiting for a reference to the cruel Afghan winter.
He's right, we did. | |||||
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #2 In other news, France vetos railway operation by timetable. "Zee train will be there when it gets there..." |
| Posted by: Chuck 2003-03-03 09:04:13 |
| #1 This war is not about today. It is about tommorow. |
| Posted by: john 2003-03-03 06:47:30 |