| ||
| ||
| ||
 |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Antiwar leaders urge U.N. lead
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia -- Russian President Vladimir Putin has been hosting a meeting of "antiwar" leaders in St. Petersburg to press for the reconstruction of Iraq to be led by the United Nations. Putin said Friday the world was better off without Saddam Hussein but he criticized the U.S. and British military force by which the former Iraqi leader had been toppled. Speaking alongside German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder at a conference in Russia's second city, he said: "We always said that the regime of Saddam Hussein does not correspondent to democracy and human rights... but you cannot solve such problems with military means." Answering a question, Putin, who was later also due to meet French President Jacques Chirac, said 80 percent of the world fell short of western standards of democracy. "Do we go to war with all of them?" he asked. "If we weigh up what is good and what is bad in the results of this war -- it is positive that we have got rid of a tyrannical regime. But by what means? Losses, destruction and the deaths of people. This is a negative consequence," he said. Putin, Chirac and Schroeder, all of whom opposed the U.S.-led war on Iraq, gathered in the Russian leader's hometown to make a joint call for the U.N. to oversee post-Saddam reconstruction. In reply to a question, Putin discounted a carve-up of interests in Iraq like that decided at the post-World War Two conference in Yalta which divided conquered Europe into zones of influence. He said this was not his idea of a system of international security and he called for the Iraqi issue to be solved within the U.N. in New York. "We stand for the fastest return of this issue to the framework of the United Nations," Putin said. "Russia and Germany are in favor of a political solution. There are no prospects for a military solution," he said. A top Pentagon official Thursday suggested France, Germany and Russia would better contribute to reconstruction by forgiving debts to any new Iraqi government. The meeting in St Petersburg had originally been planned just for Putin and Schroeder but Chirac was added to the guest list as U.S. forces ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. A top Pentagon official Thursday suggested France, Germany and Russia would better contribute to reconstruction by forgiving debts to any new Iraqi government. Also on Friday in Russia, former Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov said that, on the eve of the war in Iraq, he conveyed a message from President Putin to Saddam urging him to step down. Putin called Primakov late March 17 and asked him to travel to Baghdad to pass the message to Saddam, Primakov told reporters. "Vladimir Putin said that everything must be done in order to avert an armed invasion of Iraq, because it invariably would lead to large numbers of casualties among the civilian population," Primakov said. Primakov said he told Saddam that, if he "loves his country and his people and wants to spare it these casualties, he should resign." At the end of the meeting, Saddam patted Primakov on the shoulder and departed, promising to cooperate more actively with U.N. inspectors, Interfax said.
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
