Britain challenges U.N on Iraq

UNITED NATIONS -- Britain challenged the United Nations on Saturday to stand up to Iraq's defiance of Security Council resolutions, echoing the demand issued by President Bush under threat of unilateral U.S. military attack.\n"We have not just an interest, but a responsibility to ensure that Iraq complies fully with international law," British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told the 190-nation General Assembly. "We have to be clear to Iraq and to ourselves about the consequences which will flow from a failure by Iraq to meet its obligations."\nBritain's position mirrored Bush's call to the United Nations to confront the "grave and gathering danger" posed by Iraq or let Baghdad face U.S. action.\nGermany, another close U.S. ally, reiterated its opposition to military force and called for the United Nations to intensify pressure on Iraq to admit inspectors and find a political solution.\n"The Security Council and the member states have to make unequivocally clear to Baghdad that the unrestricted and unconditioned readmission of the weapons inspectors is the only way to avert a great tragedy for Iraq and the whole region," German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer told the General Assembly.\nPounding away at the challenge he outlined Thursday in his U.N. speech, Bush said Saturday the United Nations should "show some backbone" and confront Saddam. Standing alongside another strong ally, Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, at Camp David in Maryland, Bush said the United States would act alone if necessary.\nWhile key council members said they'd support setting a deadline for the return of inspectors, none backed the use of force.\nStraw told reporters after a meeting Friday of the council's five veto-wielding members -- the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France -- that there was "complete unanimity about the imperative of getting the weapons inspectors back into Iraq." But members wanted more time to discuss formulating a new resolution on Iraq, possibly setting a strict deadline for complying.\nIraq's foreign minister, Naji Sabri, said late Saturday he hoped the crisis could be resolved without a new U.N. resolution.\nIn his speech to the General Assembly on Saturday, Straw never referred directly to the use of force, but made clear that Britain believes there must be consequences if Saddam refuses to admit inspectors.\n"We cannot let Iraq go on defying a decade of Security Council resolutions," Straw said. "We must require Iraq to readmit inspectors with unfettered access. If we fail to deal with this challenge, the United Nations itself will be seriously weakened."\nGermany's Fischer called Saddam's regime "a brutal dictatorship" that has attacked its neighbors and "is horrendous for the Iraqi people and a risk for the region."\nBut he advocated multilateral action involving the United Nations to deal with Iraq, not any automatic use of military force, noting that Afghanistan is not yet stabilized. He also said "explosive regional conflicts in Kashmir, in the Middle East and in the Caucasus have to be solved, or at least effectively contained."\nFischer, speaking after a meeting with Iraq's Foreign Minister Naji Sabri, said, "I made it absolutely clear to him what our position is. It is now in the hands of the Iraqi government to avert a great tragedy."\nMany nations remain opposed to unilateral military action against Iraq, although they broadly support U.S. goals. Russia and China have called for a political settlement; France has proposed a two-step approach to get Saddam to comply.\nMalaysia's deputy prime minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, warned that an attack against Iraq without credible evidence of the threat it poses will only "swell the ranks of the discontented in the Muslim world."\nArab League members Saturday unanimously appealed to Baghdad to allow the immediate return of inspectors.\nForeign ministers from the 22-member Arab League met with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the sidelines of the assembly and made an urgent appeal to Saddam.\nInspectors left Baghdad four years ago ahead of U.S. and British airstrikes to punish Iraq for its failure to cooperate with U.N. inspections. Under Security Council resolutions imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, sanctions cannot be lifted until inspectors certify that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction have been dismantled.\nThe Bush administration claims Iraq is close to developing nuclear weapons and maintains a stockpile of chemical and biological agents.