ISLAMABAD, 14 March 2003 — Pakistan yesterday urged the international community to allow more time for a peaceful solution to end the Iraq crisis and avoid war.
“Peace be given a chance, a fair chance. This is what Pakistan believes in,” Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, whose country holds a seat on the UN Security Council, told a briefing for foreign reporters.
Ruling party officials have told Reuters that Pakistan would abstain from any Security Council vote which would pave the way for war in Iraq.
A Security Council vote presents Pakistan with a major dilemma, torn as it is between growing US pressure and calls from hard-line groups at home to not just abstain, but vote against any authorization for war.
“The fallout will affect Pakistan definitely,” Jamali said.
He reiterated it would be difficult for Pakistan to support war and hoped the countries calling for war would not pressure Islamabad.
Jamali said President Gen. Pervez Musharraf had received phone calls from US President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell and other world leaders on Iraq yesterday.
“There is no pressure as far as we are concerned. We and the United States are friends and we have remained so...We do not expect any undue pressure from anybody,” he added.
Earlier, France and Pakistan agreed after consultations between their foreign ministers that the Iraq crisis should be resolved peacefully. French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin telephoned his counterpart Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri on Wednesday to discuss the debate on whether to authorize war against Iraq to force it to disarm peacefully.
“The two foreign ministers reiterated their position that the problem of Iraq should be resolved peacefully in accordance with United Nations Security Council resolutions,” a Foreign Ministry statement said.
France, a permanent council member with veto power, is leading the anti-war camp in the sharply divided Security Council and has threatened to veto a second resolution if it authorizes war.
Amid harsh divisions between council members, de Villepin and Kasuri agreed on the need “to create unanimity and reduce differences in the international community on the problem of Iraq.”
Prime Minister Jamali had appealed for more time for Iraq to disarm peacefully in a nationwide speech Tuesday.
He stopped short of announcing that Pakistan would abstain from voting on a resolution authorizing war, although senior members of his party said the Cabinet had decided Monday to abstain.
Kasuri reiterated Jamali’s call for more time. “In view of UN chief (weapons) inspector Hans Blix’s latest report, in which he has admitted that Iraq was implementing destruction of its long-range missiles, the process should be given more time,” Kasuri was quoted as saying by the Dawn daily.
However, he said it was premature to announce an abstention before a new resolution is finalized. “We are unaware as yet of the total contents of a fresh resolution moved in the Security Council,” the minister said.
