Bush in uphill battle for UN support

DESPITE a new Russian veto threat, President George W Bush worked the phones to foreign leaders yesterday in an uphill struggle to gain support for a UN resolution setting up war against Iraq.

"We are in the thick of diplomacy," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.

Bush needs nine votes from the 15-member UN Security Council and no vetoes from permanent members France, Russia or China to gain approval of a resolution that would give Iraq a final deadline of March 17 to disarm or face invasion.

The Security Council vote was expected this week and could come as early as today. Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov struck a blow at Bush's efforts by saying in Moscow that Russia would vote against the measure. US officials were not giving up hope on Moscow, however, until the vote is actually cast.

Bush has maintained strong relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but, in a sign of the split that could come, the White House pointed out that Russia had also objected to a UN resolution on stopping Serb repression of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in 1999, forcing NATO to do the job without UN support.

"The president would indeed be disappointed if Russia were to veto. The president would look at this as a missed opportunity for Russia to take an important moral stand to defend freedom and to prevent the risk of a massive catastrophe taking place as a result of Saddam Hussein's development of weapons of mass destruction," Fleischer said.

Bush made Iraq-related phone calls to Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Chinese President Jiang Zemin. Secretary of State Colin Powell invited the foreign minister of Guinea, Francois Ousseynou Fall, to lunch to try to secure that country's vote. Powell also worked the phones, calling the presidents of Angola and Pakistan and the foreign minister of Mexico three countries that are swing votes on the Security Council seeking their support.

Privately, US officials acknowledged the resolution could go down in defeat. Bush has threatened to attack Iraq with or without UN backing. In a sign that the United States may be moving closer to military action, US officials said the State Department was expected as early as this week to order some US diplomats out of Kuwait, Israel and Syria ahead of a possible war.

The United States and Britain have amassed about 300,000 troops in the Gulf, along with dozens of warships and nearly 600 strike aircraft, in preparation for an attack.

At the same time, the White House expressed annoyance that chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix failed to mention in his remarks to the Security Council on Friday that inspectors had found an Iraqi unmanned aircraft, whose existence was disclosed in a declassified 173-page document circulated by inspectors.