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Friday, March 14, 2003
posted by gbarto at 2:12 AM:
French news headlines:Le Monde: The US could bypass the UN. It's beginning to dawn on the French that if diplomacy is made impossible, the US will do without it. Notes the article:
A mesure que se révèlent une à une les impasses diplomatiques, l'hypothèse selon laquelle Washington pourrait finalement se passer du soutien des Nations unies paraît de plus en plus vraisemblable. Le plan britannique - par lequel Bagdad aurait été appelé à remplir six conditions prouvant sa volonté de désarmement - n'a pas suscité, selon l'expression de John Negroponte, l'ambassadeur des Etats-Unis à l'ONU, "le moindre début de compréhension". / In the measure that, one by one, diplomatic impasses are revealed, the hypotheses by which Washington will justify passing on UN support begin to seem more and more plausible. The British plan - under which Baghdad would have had to fulfill six conditions proving its intent to disarm - did not elicit, in the words of John Negroponte, US ambassador to the UN, "even the slightest beginning of comprehension."Powell is also mentioned, but not his role in all this. Powell had tried his damnedest to make diplomacy work, had done his best to not have his name mentioned in connection with another Iraq war. But lately he's felt very betrayed - or so say a lot of American accounts - that those nations whom he backed to the utmost when they were looking for any possible path to peace left him hanging when he suggested that some accountability was necessary and that the US needed more for its stationing of hundreds of thousands of troops than encouragement that it was really helpful to Jacques Chirac's plans. Having been played for the fool, Powell is suddenly the point man on the fact that this will be addressed with or without his former friends.
Le Figaro: A few days for diplomacy. But US patience is running out and France just dumped on Britain's latest compromise, making things rougher for Blair with his Labour party but maybe showing the people of England what he's up against if he wants UN support when a Security Council member has decided, in effect, that it won't even back force if Iraq is making weapons of mass destruction.
Libé: Battle over resolution fires rage. Also, Blair unloads on Chirac. The big worry for Chirac: The world hasn't been able to rally against Iraq; the English-speaking world, however, may wind up going to Iraq as an expression of its unity against France and French attempts to abuse its influence in post-WWII institutions.
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