Russia to query legal status of Iraq war at UN

RUSSIA and other countries will ask the UN to rule whether the US-led war on Iraq is legal, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov revealed yesterday.

“With other states, we will put this question before the UN’s legal department. It is very important these arguments about the legality of US actions are confirmed,” he told the State Duma lower house of parliament. “If the UN Security Council describes the US actions as an aggression, the appropriate measures will be taken. But if you or I describe them as aggression it won’t achieve anything,” the foreign minister said yesterday.

“The action has no legal basis and the attempts to justify it by resolution 1441 are not serious,” he said.

The US abandoned its efforts to have the UN Security Council approve military action against Baghdad after apparently failing to gather enough support in the 15-member Council.

The US administration argues that resolution 1441, which passed unanimously in November and which threatened Iraq with serious consequences if it failed to show it had disarmed its weapons of mass destruction, provides sufficient authority for the war. US-led forces launched the attacks against Iraq on Thursday.

Meanwhile, French President Jacques Chirac yesterday said France would not go along with a new UN resolution that would allow the US and Britain to administer post-war Iraq.

Speaking at an EU summit in Brussels, Chirac said he would not accept a resolution that “would legitimise the military intervention and which would give the belligerents the powers to administer Iraq”.

“That would justify the war after the event,” Chirac said.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair had earlier urged his 14 colleagues to support a new UN resolution to authorise a post Saddam civil authority in Iraq. Britain must yet table such a resolution at the UN Security Council, however.

Chirac said he had held a one-on-one meeting with Mr Blair on the margins of the summit to discuss the way ahead in rebuilding their relations within the EU and between one another.

“Mr Blair and I shared that same spirit,” Chirac said.

France has strongly opposed the US-led war against Iraq, a position that has divided the 15-nation bloc.

Chirac said he hoped the war would lead to the “least amount of destruction and lost lives as possible,” Chirac said he did agree the UN should play a key role on deciding the next steps on Iraq, but remained vague as to what kind of role that could be, adding that European nations still

remained divided on Iraq.