UNITED NATIONS, 7 November — The United States plans to ask the UN Security Council to vote on its revised draft resolution on Iraq tomorrow, the US ambassador to the United Nations, John Negroponte, said yesterday. "It is our intention to put the draft to the vote sometime tomorrow," he told reporters after two hours of consultations by the Council members.
But both Negroponte and the co-sponsor of the draft, British counterpart Jeremy Greenstock, said consultations would continue today. "We are ready to move to closure," Greenstock said, but added that Britain and the United States were willing to listen further to the views of their council colleagues.
The United States presented the Council with a new draft resolution yesterday giving Iraq a final chance to scrap its weapons of mass destruction or face serious consequences. The text had been revised after France and Russia objected that an earlier version would give a green light for the automatic use of military force against Iraq. In an unusual move that underlined the gravity of the situation, UN chief Kofi Annan joined Council members for closed-door consultations on the text.
Annan was accompanied to the Council by the chief UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, who has played an increasingly visible role in Council deliberations since Iraq announced Sept. 16 that it would allow the inspectors to start work after an absence of almost four years.
Russia stressed it still resolutely opposed the inclusion in the new UN resolution of the threat of automatic use of force. The new US resolution "has taken certain additional steps that take Russia’s position into account," Deputy Foreign Minister Yuri Fedotov was quoted as saying by Itar-Tass news agency in Moscow. At the same time, the Russian Foreign Ministry "is continuing to carefully study the new US document," Fedotov said.
Meanwhile, the chief of Turkey’s powerful armed forces was quoted yesterday as saying the United States should avoid a war in Iraq but that differences with Washington over the issue could be ironed out in time. Chief of General Staff Gen. Hilmi Ozkok was speaking a day after elections swept away the political elite the military has long dealt with. Elected in its place was a relatively new party viewed warily by the army for its Islamist roots.
"Of course we have anxieties. I can only express our national policy on Iraq, that this business be resolved without a war," Ozkok was quoted by Turkey’s state-run Anatolian news agency as saying while in Washington. "Quite naturally there are differences in our perspectives. This is nothing to be afraid of. In time they can be resolved," he added.
Baghdad called on UN Council members yesterday not to endorse the US draft resolution. Senior Baath Party official Saad Qassem Hammudi told reporters in Baghdad that Security Council members should "reject any resolution that does not conform to the UN charter and international law."
