BERLIN/WASHINGTON, 24 January 2003 — The United States was further isolated yesterday as Russia and China joined Germany and France in opposing a war on Iraq. Russian President Vladimir Putin called US President George W. Bush and told him the forthcoming report by UN arms inspectors to the Security Council held the key to future action on Iraq. A Kremlin statement said: “The Russian side noted that the main criteria in evaluating the situation (on Iraq) were the conclusions by international inspectors which are soon to be presented to the UN Security Council.”

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said in Athens that there were no grounds at the moment to use force against Iraq. “There is still political and diplomatic leeway to resolve the Iraq issue,” Ivanov told reporters.

China said its position on the Iraq crisis was close to that of France, which has said all must be done to avoid war, and that it was unsettled by the military buildup in the Middle East.

“I think our position is extremely close to that of France,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue told reporters. “We are worried and uneasy about the large-scale military buildup.”

Russia, China and France have powers to veto any resolution in the UN Security Council.

Germany and France yesterday angrily rejected criticism from the United States that they were isolated within Europe in their effort to avoid war in Iraq, and reaffirmed they would cooperate to secure peace.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and French President Jacques Chirac said war was not unavoidable, as political leaders in both countries attacked US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for dismissing their opposition to bloodshed as the view of “old Europe”.

The row, which deepened divisions in the trans-Atlantic alliance, even angered strong advocates of US policy in Germany and France and was likely to further galvanize growing peace movements in both European countries.

It also revived tension between George W. Bush and Schroeder only months after the German leader annoyed the American president with his anti-war campaign for re-election.

“We are both of the opinion, and the French president said that quite clearly yesterday, that one can never accept it when it is said that war is unavoidable,” Schroeder said during a ceremony in Berlin to mark the anniversary of a friendship treaty between the former adversaries.

“War may never be considered unavoidable,” said Schroeder, addressing hundreds of French and German students as Chirac listened. The comment drew loud applause. Every effort at a peaceful solution was needed to ensure Iraq comply with UN Security Council Resolution 1441, he said.

Schroeder has made clear Germany would not vote for any resolution seeking authority for war in Iraq. France has not said how it will vote but stresses it will cooperate closely with Germany. Germany holds a non-veto seat on the Security Council and chairs the Council in February.

An opinion poll by Germany’s Forsa institute found Germans back the anti-war stance — 69 percent want Germany to vote against a war and another 20 percent said Germany should abstain from a Security Council vote.

In France, opposition to a war has risen to 76 percent this week compared to 66 percent on Jan. 7 and 58 percent in August 2002, according to a CSA survey for Le Parisien.

Rumsfeld had said “vast numbers of other countries in Europe” backed the United States on a possible war in Iraq. He called the German-French position “a problem”.

“You’re thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don’t. I think that’s old Europe,” Rumsfeld said in Washington. “If you look at the entire NATO Europe today, the center of gravity is shifting to the east. And there are a lot of new members.”

German conservative Volker Ruehe, a former defense minister and normally a strong advocate of US policy, said: “It’s not right to play off Eastern Europe against Western Europe.”

“Rumsfeld is not exactly a diplomat and it is not very wise to say something like that,” said Ruehe, chairman of the German Parliament’s foreign policy committee.

“It’s unheard of,” said Hans-Ulrich Klose, a Social Democrat in Parliament. “The Americans can’t call nations a problem just because they don’t share their view. The Americans shouldn’t try to divide Europe into ‘good’ and ‘not-so-good’ Europeans.”

The White House shrugged off French and German opposition to any US-led war on Iraq, saying they could stay on the sideline if they choose because plenty of other nations will play supporting roles. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said, “it is their prerogative, if they choose, to be on the sideline” in the event of an Iraq war.

US officials cited supportive comments from the Czech Republic, Poland, the Baltic states, Romania and Bulgaria, saying these states in Eastern Europe do not like what they see in Iraq.

Six Middle East states, meanwhile, urged their neighbor Iraq to take a “more active approach” to meeting UN resolutions to avert a potentially destabilizing war. Turkey, Iran, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and regional heavyweight Egypt issued a joint declaration after meeting in the Turkish city of Istanbul.

“We solemnly call upon the Iraqi leadership...to continue cooperating with (the United Nations arms inspectors) and to demonstrate a more active approach,” the joint declaration said.

“This is the first time that the countries of the region are sending such signals, saying that war is not going to just affect Iraq but the rest of the region,” Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Al-Muasher said on the fringes of the meeting.

In Iraq, UN inspectors flew by helicopter to the northern part of the country for one of nine inspections on suspect sites in their search for weapons of mass destruction while a senior Iraqi official said that six scientists have refused to be questioned in private by the inspectors.

“We did our best to push the scientists but they refused such interviews without the presence of representatives” of Iraq’s National Monitoring Directorate, NMD chief Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin told a press conference.

US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz charged in remarks prepared for delivery in a speech in New York that President Saddam Hussein has ordered that any scientist who cooperates with UN inspectors be killed with their families. “Today, we know from multiple sources that Saddam has ordered that any scientist who cooperates during interviews will be killed, as well as their families,” Wolfowitiz said.

He said scientists were being tutored on what to say and Iraqi intelligence officers were posing as scientists to be interviewed by the inspectors. (Agencies)