UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 7 (UPI) -- U.N. Security Council diplomats Thursday anticipate at least 14 of the panel's 15 members to approve the new, slightly revised, U.S.-U.K. resolution on the return of weapons inspectors to Iraq.
A vote was scheduled in a formal meeting of the council at 10 a.m. EST Friday.
Various council members said they expected Syria, the lone Arab state on the council, to abstain or not even participate in Friday morning's vote. Fayssal Mekdad, Syria's charge d'affaires, who only hours earlier "insisted a vote be put off until Monday," said he was referring "everything to Damascus and tomorrow I will know what I shall do."
Syria previously refused to participate in a vote, literally hiding out until after the council decided to go ahead and vote on a Middle East resolution without them at nearly 4 a.m. earlier in the year.
Russian Ambassador Sergei Lavrov also said he was awaiting instructions from his capital, but several members of the council expected a positive vote from Moscow, based on questions Lavrov asked and statements he made during closed- door consultations Thursday evening.
"We have heard the latest amendments," to the resolution presented, Lavrov said. "We have heard answers to questions whether this language takes care of the problem of automaticity. We got explanations that neither of the co-sponsors interpret the language as containing automatic use of force and we will be reporting this to our capitals."
China, keeping low on the radar screen throughout the nearly two months of negotiations for the measure, was also expected to approve the measure.
Just hours earlier, France indicated it would approve when one word in a key paragraph was changed from "or" to "and," closing the loophole Paris perceived that could allow the use of force without a council discussion. Russia soon followed suit.
With the five permanent veto-holding members of the council, Britain, China, France Russia and the United States, on the positive side of the debate, it was seen by diplomats from several other nations as a green light to go for the measure as well.
John Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador, told reporters, "My sense is from the meetings we've been having in the last few days and in the meeting we had just now is that there is broad support for the resolution that we will be bringing with our co-sponsor, the United Kingdom," to the council.
He promised "detailed comments" in an "explanation of vote" after the tally was taken in the morning.
British Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock also was cautiously optimistic, saying, "We're hoping for consensus. Actually not every member of the council has declared its position."
Ambassador Alfonso Valdiviezo of Colombia, one of the non-permanent 10 elected members of the council, took his own tally and told reporters, "All 14 are there."
Asked about Russia, he said, "I think so, from what they expressed. Russia said they were going to consult with the capital, but they said they agreed with everything that had been done (in the text). It was all very positive."
Other members of the council who did not want to be identified, usually begging off on telling what some other country said by advising reporters to query directly the nation questioned, also said Russia was "on board," matching Valdivieso's description.
"The Security Council as a whole will have its hands on the steering wheel of the resolution and the implementation of it in the event the council needs to return to it if Iraq does not comply," Ambassador Richard Ryan of Ireland, a nation whose vote was in question until Thursday, told United Press International.
"Ireland has total confidence in the seasoned experience of (chief weapons inspector) Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei," executive director of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The latest version of the most recent U.S.-U.K. draft resolution was distributed as the panel went into its evening session with only two words changed from the previous draft, the "or" to "and" in the fourth operating paragraph, and, "restore" to "secure" in the penultimate, or 13th, operative paragraph on the fifth and last page of the official draft.
There were an additional three pages of an annexed letter referred to in the draft which was never officially endorsed by Baghdad but spelled out agreements reached during a Sept. 30-Oct. 1 Vienna U.N. Iraq meeting on "practical arrangements" for the resumption of weapons inspectors.
U.S. President George W. Bush challenged the United Nations in a speech at the opening of the annual general debate of the General Assembly Sept. 12 to tackle Iraq's defiance in allowing inspectors to resume inspections. There had been a threat Washington would act unilaterally, without the United Nations, leading its own coalition in an attack on Iraq for non-compliance.
Baghdad Sept. 16 said it would allow return of inspectors, later adding "unconditionally."
They left Baghdad in December 1998 on the eve of a retaliatory bombing wave by Britain and the United States for not cooperating with the Security-Council mandated inspection regime.
After Iraq's 1990 invasion of neighboring Kuwait, which led to the 1991 Gulf War, sanctions were imposed on Baghdad. One of the war's cease-fire provisions was that Iraq would disarm, ridding itself of weapons of mass destruction and the inspectors would verify.
It is under the rubric of "material breach" of those earlier resolutions that the United States and Britain felt there was no further need for the council to approve any use of force because Baghdad thwarted the inspections.
Blix, chairman of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, once again Thursday cited The Vienna Convention of the Law on Treaties, of 1967, "which defines the expression material breach and makes it possible for states to suspend or even to abrogate treaties if there has been a material breach.
"They define it as the violation of an article, the fulfillment of which is essential for the accomplishment of the object and purpose of the treaty," Blix told reporters. "So, by that, I would say that it is not just any little oversight that is a material breach. It has to be a little more significant. This is my interpretation of it." He was referring to possible future problems.
The "and" substituted in the key paragraph for "or" was in the paragraph's last few words:
"4. Decides that false statements or omissions in the declarations submitted by Iraq pursuant to this resolution and failure by Iraq at any time to comply with, and cooperate fully in the implementation of, this resolution shall constitute a further material breach of Iraq's obligations and will be reported to the Council for assessment in accordance with
paragraph 11 and 12 below."
That paragraph referred to:
"11. Directs the Executive Chairman of UNMOVIC and the Director General of the IAEA to report immediately to the Council any interference by Iraq with inspection activities, as well as any failure by Iraq to comply with its disarmament obligations, including its obligations regarding inspections under this resolution;
"12. Decides to convene immediately upon receipt of a report in accordance with paragraphs 4 or 11 above, in order to consider the situation and the need for full compliance with all of the relevant Council resolutions in order to secure international peace and security."
"Secure" was changed from "restore," as explained by a broadly smiling U.S. official as a move to "strengthen" the draft resolution.
