A Long, Winding Road to a Diplomatic Dead End

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

A Long, Winding Road to a Diplomatic Dead End

March 17, 2003
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN




 

WASHINGTON, March 16 - Dining in September with a group of
foreign ministers at the elegant Hotel Pierre in New York,
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was uneasy. France was
advocating that a first resolution at the United Nations
Security Council, demanding that Iraq promptly disclose its
weapons and disarm, must be followed by a second resolution
authorizing war if Iraq refused.

"Be sure about one thing," Mr. Powell told Dominique de
Villepin, the French foreign minister. "Don't vote for the
first, unless you are prepared to vote for the second."

Mr. de Villepin assented, officials who were there said.


But in the months since, France has rejected any second
resolution clearing the way for war. And Mr. de Villepin
won over most of the other 13 Council members.

With some bitterness, American officials now say France
never really intended to support a war with Iraq. French
officials say equally bitterly that the United States never
intended anything but a war in the spring of 2003.

Just about everyone involved now acknowledges that a train
of miscalculations and misunderstandings has produced a
setback for American diplomacy and world standing.

The United States and Britain appear likely to lead an
attack, against the will of Europe's biggest states,
without the military help of Turkey, despite deep anxieties
among Arab countries and fought to the sound of angry
protest throughout much of the world.

"We have had our share of mistakes," said a senior
administration official. "But fundamentally we have fallen
victim to a different reading from many of our friends
about the necessity of dealing with the problem of Iraq.
The more these differences arose, the more they aggravated
resentment over American power in the world."

In more than a dozen interviews, top policy makers in the
United States and other countries ascribed the current
situation to many factors.

Some cite international anger over the Bush
administration's opposition to the Kyoto global warming
agreement, several arms control treaties and other
mechanisms of international law.

Administration officials acknowledge that as the White
House switched its signals - was the aim to disarm Iraq, or
to defeat its leaders? - the mixed messages undercut the
claim that the United States, too, wanted to avoid a war.

Still others say that by seizing on the first report by
Hans Blix, one of the two chief United Nations weapons
inspectors, as a prima facie case for war, the United
States and Britain made him ever more cautious in his
conclusions. 

Some criticize Mr. Powell for not engaging in shuttle
diplomacy to build support around the world. "He should get
off the phone and get on a plane," said an administration
official. 

Mr. Powell's defenders blame the blunt criticism of Europe
by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for undercutting
his efforts to build support there.

In the last month or two, others say, American tactics
backfired as diplomats tried to persuade smaller, undecided
countries to accept a faster timetable. The more the
pressure, the more the resentment it generated, some said.

Assertions that Iraq was linked to Al Qaeda backfired,
too, European officials said, as intelligence services in
Europe told their leaders that even the Central
Intelligence Agency had doubts about the connection.

Even Mr. Bush's efforts to paint a grand vision of
democracy in the Arab world, starting in Iraq, backfired,
with Mr. de Villepin gaining support by warning that the
United States had dreams of remaking the Middle East in its
own image of democracy.


The Fall of 2002 
Misunderstanding At United Nations


Despite misgivings
among his aides, Mr. Powell got President Bush to accede to
a French request last fall to pass one measure at the
Security Council on Iraq in November, and to allow the
Council a second opportunity to discuss what to do if
President Saddam Hussein failed to comply with the first.

With Mr. Bush surrounded by skeptics - Vice President Dick
Cheney, Mr. Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice, the national
security adviser - administration officials said Mr. Powell
tried to convince that inner circle that at the end of the
process, the French would recognize the failure of the
inspections and agree to war.

"Condi was the tipping factor," said an administration
official, referring to Ms. Rice. "Powell convinced her that
the French would be with us. It was wrong then, and it is
wrong today." 

Whereas the United States saw the resolution as a way of
rallying the world around its charge that Mr. Hussein was
defying the inspections and the demands to disarm, France
and others saw it as a way of pressing the inspections
forward as long as they were bearing fruit, with or without
Iraqi cooperation. 

This misunderstanding, many say, was compounded by the fact
that the entire process of trying to avert a war through
inspections and negotiations was undercut by the military
buildup that the United States said was necessary to force
Iraq to comply - a buildup that some officials later argued
could not be reversed without the United States losing
face. 

"In retrospect, the military buildup and the diplomacy were
out of sync with each other," said Richard C. Holbrooke,
ambassador to the United Nations in the Clinton
administration. "The policies were executed in a
provocative way that alienated our friends."

By mid-September, the contradictions were apparent to both
sides. It was then that Iraq acceded to receiving the
inspections, with Secretary General Kofi Annan at the
United Nations helping Iraq draft the statement letting
them in. 

French officials recall that, whereas they were elated at
this development, they detected that American officials
seemed to be upset. "It should have been a happy moment,"
said a French official. "But the Americans saw it as a
setback. They showed they never wanted the inspections to
work." 

The negotiations to produce Resolution 1441 at the Security
Council were a high-water mark for Mr. Powell, who won
worldwide praise for his efforts to avert war by giving Mr.
Hussein one last chance for a peaceful exit through
disarmament and disclosure, if not by relinquishing power
voluntarily. 

Mr. Powell told associates that he truly believed that the
process could work, and the administration began changing
its rhetoric from "regime change" to "disarmament."

But a top official called this whole process "a willful
suspension of disbelief" - there was a feeling that no one
wanted to admit publicly that it was like "sprinkling pixie
dust" on the problem, as one put it.


A Cold New Year 
Show of Agreement Slips, Then Is Lost



According to
American, French and United Nations diplomats, the pretense
of agreement slipped away in December and got lost in
January. 

First came Iraq's declaration of its weapons on Dec. 7,
falling far short of the disclosure demanded by the United
Nations. The Bush administration debated whether to go to
the United Nations then and there and demand a new
declaration that Iraq was in "material breach" of its
obligations. 

But a senior administration official said it was decided
that such a move would be seen as too provocative and too
much evidence of American desire for war. Some in the
administration now say the decision not to confront the
United Nations at that time was a mistake, because it would
have started the debate on using force much earlier.

If there was a turning point in this period, the French
say, it occurred when Mr. Blix, the co-chief United Nations
weapons inspector, began circulating a timetable for how he
would proceed with his job in mid-January.

Because Resolution 1441 did not have a timetable, Mr. Blix
and his team reverted to one from the 1990's calling for a
step-by-step introduction of inspectors, setting up their
infrastructure and then establishing "tasks" for Iraq to
carry out. The "tasks" are due to be listed on March 27.

Once the United States got a look at the plan, there were
objections. Ms. Rice and others, including John D.
Negroponte, the American ambassador to the United Nations,
issued statements saying the United States could not wait
until that date. 

"That was the moment of truth, when we suddenly realized we
were going to war," said a French official.

But American diplomats regard the French view as
disingenuous, a reflection of French unwillingness to see
that the inspections could not be strung along forever.

The French-American alienation reached the breaking point
on Jan. 20, when Mr. Powell attended a Security Council
session presided over by Mr. de Villepin, ostensibly to
discuss terrorism. Afterward, the French foreign minister
held a news conference and declared forcefully, "Nothing!
Nothing!" justified war. American officials did not hear
about the news conference until the next day.

"We looked at each other and said, `What the hell is going
on here?' " said an aide to Mr. Powell. "I think it all
started to come apart after that moment."


The Inspections 
Inconclusive Process For the U.S. and Blix



If there is one point on which American and other officials
agree, it is that the administration failed to appreciate
the dynamics of the inspections process.

Several diplomats at the United Nations said American
leaders were confident that Mr. Blix would either be
rebuffed by the Iraqis or he would find evidence of weapons
of mass destruction that would make it obvious that the
only solution was war.

The Americans were not expecting an inconclusive
inspections process that would be seized upon by others as
evidence that, while Iraq was far from cooperative, the
process itself was working.

Some in the administration say that before Mr. Blix went
in, Mr. Bush or Mr. Powell should have made a major speech
framing the issue the way that the United States saw it -
that small, niggling steps by Iraq were not evidence that
inspections were workable.

But again, they said, there was a desire not to be seen as
too eager for war even though the eagerness was barely
disguised anyway. 

To coax the process along, Mr. Powell made his presentation
to the United Nations Security Council on Feb. 5. For about
an hour and a half, he presented photographs, intercepts
and assertions from informants about Iraq's weapons
programs, and he generally won praise for his presentation.


An initial report by Mr. Blix that Iraq was not complying
adequately was seized on by the United States with such
enthusiasm that, according to one person close to him, Mr.
Blix shrank back in subsequent reports and was exceedingly
careful not to give the United States further ammunition.

Consequently, there were bitter feelings among American
officials, underscored as Mr. Blix repeatedly seemed to
side with France and others that he would be able to find
more evidence of weapons if only he had more time.

Mr. Blix's mantra was that he was making progress in
finding weapons, that inspectors had after all destroyed
more weapons in the 1990's than had been destroyed during
the Persian Gulf war in 1991, that Mr. Hussein was now less
dangerous than he had been before because he was trapped
"in a box with the inspectors inside the box."

Administration officials say they continue to respect Mr.
Blix's standing, and many say they should have figured out
how to outmaneuver him early on. But by the time they
realized he was not going to help the United States cause,
it was too late. 


Outflanking the French
Seeing Easy Support, Facing Hard Sells


Once the Bush
administration realized it had lost France, its diplomatic
strategy centered on trying to enlist Russia to support, or
at least not veto, a resolution that would declare Iraq as
failing to comply with the United Nations demands. The five
veto-bearing Security Council members are Russia, China,
Britain, France and the United States.

The American thinking was that if Russia acquiesced, China
would as well, and there would then be a good chance of
getting at least five additional votes from six undecided
countries: Pakistan, Chile, Mexico, Cameroon, Guinea and
Angola. 

But Russia was a hard sell because of its own longstanding
relationship with Iraq and Mr. Hussein. President Vladimir
V. Putin was still smarting from having to accept Bush
administration policies from NATO expansion to scrapping
the treaty barring antiballistic missiles.

But the more the United States tried to dangle incentives,
like help in paying off $8 billion in debts owed by Iraq to
Russia, the more such efforts seem to backfire.

"The argument we made was that if you want your $8 billion,
aren't you more likely to get it from a regime that's
integrated into the world economy, and that you have helped
put in power?" said a senior official. "We were not pushing
a quid pro quo. It was just a matter of political logic."
Nonetheless, the Russians ended up joining with France and
Germany to oppose a speeded-up timetable for authorizing a
war against Iraq. 

Among the six undecided countries on the Security Council,
Americans and Pakistanis agree that President Pervez
Musharraf of Pakistan would have gone along with the United
States if he had been the ninth and final vote and was
needed. That meant lining up two of the three African
countries. 

Last weekend, Mr. de Villepin went to all three of the
African countries, but his efforts seemed to backfire. Then
it was the Americans' turn to feel that their efforts had
backfired. Some of the last-minute compromise proposals -
like extending the inspections process to later in March,
then passing a resolution - were pushed by Britain in
response to Mexico and Chile.

But officials said President Vicente Fox of Mexico was too
boxed in politically after the United States gave him
little of his own agenda, particularly easing curbs on
Mexican immigrants in the United States.

There were hints for Chile that if it went along with
Washington, it might smooth the way for its free-trade
agreement pending in Congress. But Chilean leaders reacted
negatively, saying the agreement benefited the United
States just as much as Chile.

"I always thought the United States would have been able to
get nine votes for just about anything," said a diplomat
involved in the process of the last few months. "What I
didn't expect was that the skeptics would become more
entrenched. One African official said to me, `What can the
Americans do to us? Are they going to bomb us? Invade us?'
" 


The Powell Conundrum
Diplomatic Efforts Made From Home

Throughout the last
several months, one of the puzzles at the State Department
and throughout the administration is why Mr. Powell, one of
the best-known and best-liked Americans in many parts of
the world, never engaged in a campaign of public
appearances abroad as energetic as the telephone and
broadcast interview campaign he pressed from his office,
home and car. 

"His travels abroad are too few and far between," said an
official, noting that the only trips Mr. Powell made to
Europe since the beginning of last year were to accompany
the president or to attend short-lived conferences.

The secretary also never traveled to Turkey to help line up
support for using its territory as a base for a northern
front in the war, although State Department officials say
doing so would have undercut his stance that he was trying
to prevent a conflict.

Mr. Powell is known to dislike travel. "I think I have a
right balance between phone diplomacy, diplomacy here in
Washington, and diplomacy on the road," he said recently
when questioned about his schedule.

Some specialists say that if Mr. Powell had gone to Europe
to do town meetings and to answer questions, he might have
generated good will of the sort that Prime Minister Tony
Blair has in Britain.

"I'm a great advocate of what I call gardening," said
former Secretary of State George P. Shultz. "If you plant a
garden and you ignore it for six months, it's taken over by
weeds. But if you keep at it, month after month, then it
grows. In diplomacy, the same thing is true."

Mr. Shultz said Mr. Powell had been an "exemplar" of the
kind of patient cultivating of diplomacy he advocates,
adding that it was unfair to criticize him for not
traveling more because he and Mr. Bush had cultivated
relations with counterparts very well.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/17/international/middleeast/17RECO.html?ex=10
48902885&ei=1&en=160d36ad2c95bd87

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