WASHINGTON/BAGHDAD, 30 October — As the key Security Council members remained deadlocked over the wording of a UN resolution on disarming Iraq yesterday, a vote seemed unlikely this week.
A senior US State Department official, who declined to be named, said the UN Security Council would probably not end debate and vote on a US-authored resolution on Iraq until after the Nov. 5 US midterm elections.
"It looks like we’re getting pretty close," said the official. "It doesn’t look like there will be a vote until at least next week or the week after. The earliest would be next week after the election."
"There is no hard deadline, but to state the obvious the United Nations realizes that it’s approaching decision-making time," said Ari Fleischer, chief spokesman for US President George W. Bush.
Fleischer, who said he would not rule out a UN vote next week, warned that the United Nations was near a loose deadline Bush set in mid-September at the UN General Assembly in which he warned that the world body had "days and weeks, not months" before Washington confronted Iraq.
"It is approaching the point now where the president says days and weeks not months. It’s approaching the point where it’s months," he said as the United Nations Security Council debated a US-authored resolution on Iraq.
Yesterday, Iraq called for independent monitoring of any UN arms inspectors, saying it feared that Washington would otherwise use the inspections as a pretext for war. Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan made clear that Baghdad did not trust the United States or the inspectors. "America doesn’t want the return of inspectors. It wants to issue a (UN) resolution with a formula in order to be rejected by Iraq and give it a pretext to commit aggression against Iraq," Ramadan said in remarks published by Baghdad newspapers. Putting forward the idea for independent media and individuals to accompany the UN inspection teams, he said: "We will not allow the inspectors to be the sole source (of information) because we don’t trust them."
The White House brushed off the Iraqi call. "Once again Iraq is attaching conditions to something in which they should have no say," said Fleischer.
France, widely seen as the key to any deal on an Iraq resolution, signaled it was still resisting US pressure for an automatic trigger for force if Iraqi President Saddam Hussein impeded UN inspectors.
