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."