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STRATFOR.com
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THE INTERNET SOURCE FOR GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE
If it’s in the news, it’s too late...
War Diary: Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2002
Tuesday was dominated by diplomacy. In the United Nations, the process of producing the first new Security Council resolution remained stalled while Russia sought to extract maximum value. Not coincidentally, reports circulated that U.S. President George W. Bush might travel to Russia in November. A series of U.S. diplomatic initiatives were under way in the Middle East, while the situation in Iran became more and more interesting.
Image Credit: Stratfor.com.
In the United Nations, the United States began to express frustration at the amount of time being taken to approve a resolution concerning weapons inspections in Iraq. Russia appears to be the sticking point, with concerns that the new resolution is too similar to previous ones and might provide Washington with a pretext to attack Iraq regardless of what a second U.N. resolution might say. An official leak in Moscow carried by Russian news agencies quoted a senior official as saying, "The document was a serious disappointment, particularly since U.S. officials have said a lot in recent days about being ready to take into account the positions of other countries and to find a mutually acceptable compromise."
Nicely playing out the diplomatic ballet, Bush said he was prepared to give the diplomatic process one more try and thinks it might work. "If he [Saddam Hussein] were to meet all the conditions of the U.N., the conditions that I've described very clearly in terms that everybody can understand, that in itself will signal the regime has changed," Bush said, implying that Hussein might stay in power.
Since Russian officials know perfectly well that Washington can't back off very easily at this point from an attack on Iraq, and since Bush knows equally well that Hussein is not going to unambiguously disarm, the ballet is a bit baffling -- but only a bit. The United States now is dickering with Moscow over the price it will take to get Russia's buy-in to the war. For the Kremlin, the key issues remain Iraq's debt to Russia and the future of Russian oil concessions in Iraq. But those are the small questions.
(The Rest of the Story)
(c) 2001 Stratfor, Inc.
Dan
War Diary: Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2002 . . .