Diplomatic scramble
By Wolf Blitzer
CNN
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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- It's fair to say these are critical hours in the showdown with Iraq. President Bush and his advisers are making clear they want a vote this week at the United Nations Security Council. They want all 15 members on the record when it comes to Iraqi compliance with earlier U.N. resolutions.
Behind the scenes, the diplomacy is intense. Everyone is scrambling right now. U.S. officials profess to be optimistic they will secure at least eight and maybe nine affirmative votes. But they are by no means optimistic they can avoid a French or Russian or perhaps even a Chinese veto.
If the resolution is vetoed, all bets are off. The earlier British-proposed deadline of March 17 for Iraq to come clean is not operative; neither would be other mooted deadlines, including March 24 or March 27. I am hearing that if the new resolution doesn't pass, President Bush almost certainly will go on television shortly thereafter, urge the U.N. weapons inspectors, other humanitarian workers, and journalists to immediately get out of Iraq. A U.S.-led assault would follow in relatively quick order.
"Well, that's a possibility of course, but I cannot speak for the American government," the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, Sergey Lavrov, told me when I laid out that scenario for him. "So I cannot really speculate when and how this would start."
Lavrov, at the same time, insists there is no reason to go to war. He says the chief U.N. weapons inspectors, Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, are producing results. "Under the circumstances, we, frankly, don't see any reason whatsoever for interrupting those inspections and for using force."
By the way, Lavrov, even while refusing to back away from earlier Russian threats to cast a veto, did signal a possible readiness to go along with Britain's latest proposal to have a series of "benchmarks" that the Iraqis would have to meet in order to avoid a war. Lavrov notes that Blix, himself, had told U.N. Security Council members earlier in the week that he would be proposing a series of tests for the Iraqis. "So if the British position is now in support of implementing the existing resolutions and allowing Mr. Blix to give the council, as he must, the list of key remaining disarmament tasks, then our position would be the same. But it is for Mr. Blix to give us the exact list of those tasks."
