POLITICS: Iraq Decision Will Ring Throughout Region – U.N. Chief

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

United Nations, Mar 10 2003 (IPS) - How the U.N. Security Council deals with the Iraq crisis will signal whether it can successfully treat the most profound problem in the Middle East region: Palestinian-Israeli relations, U.N. chief Kofi Annan said Monday.

He also warned that if the United States were to attack Iraq without returning to the Security Council, such a move would violate the U.N. charter.

How the U.N. Security Council deals with the Iraq crisis will signal whether it can successfully treat the most profound problem in the Middle East region: Palestinian-Israeli relations, U.N. chief Kofi Annan said Monday.

The Iraqi problem does not exist in a vacuum, the secretary-general told reporters. ”What happens there will have profound implications – for better or worse – for other issues of great importance to the surrounding region, and to the world.”

”The broader the consensus on Iraq, the better the chance that we can come together again and deal effectively with other burning conflicts in the world, starting with the one between Israelis and Palestinians.”

Only a just solution to that conflict, he pointed out, can bring real hope of lasting stability in the region.

The Security Council is expected to vote this week on a U.S.-led resolution that would find Iraq in ”material breach” of an order that it surrender any weapons of mass destruction on its territory. A positive decision would be seen as authorising an attack on Baghdad.

But recent events have led to speculation that Washington will not risk a vote that might be defeated and will attack without returning to the Security Council.

Such a move would violate the U.N. charter, Annan warned Monday.

In one of his strongest criticisms so far of the U.S. plans for unilateral military action, Annan said the 15 members of the Security Council now face a critical choice.

”If they fail to agree on a common position, and action is taken without the authority of the Security Council, the legitimacy and support for any such action will be seriously impaired,” he added.

But Annan also pointed out that if the Council members succeed in uniting – even at this late hour – such a show of unity will enhance the authority of the Council, and ”the world will be a safer place”.

Annan’s comments are diametrically opposed to those of U.S. President George W. Bush, who has threatened to go to war against Iraq ”with or without Security Council authorisation”. At a press conference last Thursday, Bush said the United States does not need anyone’s permission to go to war.

Washington needs nine positive votes in the Council – and no vetoes – for its resolution, supported by Britain and Spain, to be adopted.

But as of Monday, it still lacked firm assurances from Council members for those nine votes. Even if they are delivered, France has threatened to exercise its veto and reject the resolution.

Besides France, the other four members with veto powers are the United States, Britain, China and Russia. The 10 non-permanent members in the Security Council do not hold vetoes.

A confident U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters Sunday, ”You can make your own count, we will make our vote count.”

But on Monday, there was a new veto threat, this time from Russia, whose foreign minister Igor Ivanov was forthright in saying that his country would vote against the resolution.

Asked how badly damaged the Security Council would be with the new veto threat, Annan said, ”I think obviously there are divisions, and this is why they need to come together and seek a compromise and work together.”

Failure to fix the Iraq crisis would resonate beyond the Middle East, added the U.N. chief, including on the Korean Peninsula and in Africa, where conflicts rage in Ivory Coast and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

An ambassador from a member country of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) predicted that if the United States is not confident of getting the nine votes, it will withdraw its resolution – and to go war, instead.

”I cannot think of any country in living memory which went to war after such action was rejected by the Security Council,” he told IPS.

But there are dozens of instances, including wars in the Middle East, where U.N. member states launched attacks, presumably in self-defence, without approaching the United Nations for authorisation.

”The United States realises that to go war immediately after a rejection from the Security Council would be tantamount to a violation of the U.N. charter,” the ambassador said.

”But it can get away with murder by not coming to the Security Council for its blessings,” he added.

Asked if Washington would be in breach of the U.N. charter if it goes to war following a vetoed resolution, U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte sidestepped the question. ”I will not speculate on any kind of hypotheses,” he told reporters Monday.