France, Germany criticize US plan

By David Filipov, Globe Staff
and Joe Lauria, Globe Correspondent, 9/5/2003

MOSCOW -- The leaders of Germany and France yesterday slapped down a new US proposal for more international troops and aid to stabilize and rebuild Iraq, while French diplomats called for a return of UN weapons inspectors into the country.

Russia took a softer line, with a senior official saying Moscow had not ruled out contributing to a peacekeeping force.

The reactions from the countries -- all of them key members of the UN Security Council, which will begin debates today on the US draft resolution -- reflected their continued reluctance to defer to American control of postwar Iraq. France, Germany, and Russia led international political opposition before the US-led war in their so-called "non-nein-nyet" coalition.

Although France and Germany said they were open to compromise on the new proposal, French officials told the Security Council meeting yesterday during a closed-door meeting that they wanted UN weapons inspectors to resume work in Iraq. Although the US proposal does not mention the inspectors, diplomats said such a request could become a key negotiating point between the United States, which has rejected the idea of the inspectors' return, and the countries that opposed the war.

According to a French official who spoke on condition of anonymity, Ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere told the council meeting, "It is very important that Iraq's disarmament should be certified by an international body. It should be taken into consideration in due time."

The inspectors were forced to leave Iraq last March, before the US launched its war against the Saddam Hussein government.

While Moscow is eager to shore up relations with Washington that were soured by the conflict with the United States over Iraq, French and German leaders continued to express opposition to a US-dominated occupation.

"We are ready to examine the proposals but they seem quite far from what appears to us the primary objective, namely the transfer of political responsibility to an Iraqi government as soon as possible," President Jacques Chirac of France said at a news conference in Dresden, Germany, with his German counterpart, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

With US troops coming under attack and taking casualties daily in Iraq, the Bush administration circulated a draft resolution Wednesday aimed at getting other countries to provide cash and troops for a postwar reconstruction of Iraq that would remain under US political control and military command.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Moscow would consider sending peacekeepers if the UN Security Council approves the US resolution. Ivanov did not address the question of putting Russian troops under US command, a politically tricky issue for America's former Cold War rival. But President Vladimir Putin, who is scheduled to hold a summit with President Bush in the United States later this month, said in August he would not oppose the idea if the UN sanctioned it.

The draft resolution would transform the US-led military force in Iraq into a UN-authorized multinational force under an American commander. But European leaders, whose constituents largely opposed the US-led invasion, are reluctant to send troops into what is becoming an increasingly dangerous combat zone under American commanders, analysts said.

"No one should think of this as a peacekeeping operation," said Celeste Wallander of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "This is a peace enforcement situation. What you really need are significant forces, not symbolic battalions."

France and Russia are among the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, a position that gives them veto power over council votes. Schroeder, Chirac, and Putin were all vocal opponents of the war, but while the Russian leader has continued to press for a greater UN role in post-war Iraq, he has not been as adamant as his French and German counterparts in insisting that the United States cede control.

"Everyone knows the US made a mistake by going into Iraq and trying to occupy it alone," said Ivan Safranchuk, head of the Moscow office of the Washington-based Center for Defense Information. "But while Schroeder and Chirac want to make Bush admit it publicly, Putin is not interested in having the US lose face."

Schroeder said that although France and Germany opposed the war, they now want to help bring stability and democracy to Iraq; he welcomed the new US proposal as a basis for negotiations. But the German leader made it clear that Washington needed to give greater control to the UN.

In Washington, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said that the French and Germans had not proposed a timetable for transferring power to Iraqis, which he said the resolution calls on the Iraqis themselves to work out.

"I think the resolution is drafted in a way that deals with the concerns that leaders such as President Chirac and Chancellor Schroeder have raised in the past," he said. "We'd be more than happy to listen to their suggestions."

Analysts said the new US proposal was a significant reversal for the administration, which has resisted a large UN involvement in Iraq after the Security Council did not support the war that ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

The postwar operation is costing the United States about $3.9 billion a month and has forced the American military to keep 140,000 troops stationed in Iraq amid growing casualties.

For Chirac and Schroeder, the US appeal to the UN represents an opportunity to go on the diplomatic offensive and "to beat the US up for being hegemonic," Wallander said.

Russia, which is counting on a postwar role for its oil companies, which had signed millions of dollars worth of contracts with Hussein, has little incentive to anger the United States. Both Chirac and Schroeder, however, have domestic political motives for wanting to stand up to Washington, and Chirac in particular has been pushing the idea of a Europe that does not look to the United States on defense issues.

Demetrius Perricos, the acting chairman of the weapons inspectors, known as UNMOVIC, told the Security Council yesterday that his scaled-down inspection team was ready to return to Iraq. He also pointed out that the council had not changed UNMOVIC's mandate and that its work has only been technically suspended.

"It is for the council to decide what role may be assigned to UNMOVIC in the confirmation of the disarmament of Iraq," he said, according to briefing notes from the meeting obtained by the Globe.

Filipov reported from Moscow, Lauria from the United Nations. Material from the Associated Press and Reuters was used in this report.