Allies gear up for looming U.S.-led war on Iraq as critics carp
Allies gear up for looming U.S.-led war on Iraq as critics carp
Agence France-Presse Sydney, Australia
France reiterated on Monday that it would not support a resolution authorizing war on Iraq after U.S. President George W. Bush gave the United Nations 24 hours to act to disarm Iraq.
But Japan backed Bush's deadline and U.S.-ally Australian Prime Minister John Howard said his country's military participation in a war was more likely than it had ever been.
After an emergency summit on Sunday with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, Bush vowed to end months of diplomatic stalemate and said the world had to take action.
"We concluded that tomorrow is a moment of truth for the world," Bush told a press conference after the hastily called summit in Portugal's Azores islands as the leaders urged the UN to agree to an ultimatum authorizing force if Iraq does not disarm.
But French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said on Monday: "France cannot accept the resolution on the table that lays down an ultimatum."
Howard received a telephone call from the U.S. president and said afterwards a decision on Australia's participation in war appeared to be imminent.
"Military participation by Australia in action against Iraq is now even more likely than it may have appeared a few days ago," Howard said at a press conference.
"I think the thing should be brought to a head and it will be," he said. He has already sent 2,000 troops, 14 fighter aircraft and three navy ships to the Gulf to join a massive U.S.- British military buildup, sparking the biggest protest demonstrations his country has seen since the Vietnam war.
Japan called Bush's 24-hour deadline the "last chance" for diplomacy.
"I will support the U.S. policy," Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told reporters.
New Zealand's Prime Minister Helen Clark also voiced fears over the looming war.
"I fear for the worst, save for some kind of miracle the diplomacy trail seemed to have gone pretty cold by the end of last week," she told TV1's Breakfast program on Monday.
She rejected the argument that an invasion of Iraq could be justified by its liberation from the rule of Saddam Hussein. "A regime change is not something that the UN is mandated to do," she said.
Norway on Sunday called on Iraq to seize a "final chance" to avoid war, offered by the United States, Britain and Spain. And Swedish Prime Minister Goeran Persson said of the looming conflict: "The question is whether this happens with or without UN backing."