France and Germany in final appeal talks

Germany and France renewed calls today to weapons inspectors more time in Iraq, hours before both countries’ leaders were to discuss their next diplomatic moves to avert war.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and French President Jacques Chirac were holding talks in Berlin tonight just as US and British diplomats were launching a push for a UN Security Council resolution to set the stage for disarming Saddam Hussein by force.

France would put forth new proposals today to strengthen weapons inspections, Chirac’s spokeswoman Catherine Colonna said in Paris.

She did not elaborate, but Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said that France wants to step up pressure on Baghdad by proposing a schedule for Iraq to follow through on disarmament demands.

The proposal was to be discussed by Schroeder, Chirac and their foreign ministers at their dinner meeting tonight in a Berlin restaurant appropriately called The Final Appeal.

In a divided Europe, France and Germany – which currently chairs the Security Council – are the key powers resisting the rush to war. Both are urging more time for strengthened weapons inspections and oppose a new UN resolution.

France believes a new resolution is “neither useful nor necessary,” Colonna said today.

“There is no reason today to interrupt the strategy of inspections to veer into another way of thinking that would lead to war,” she said.

Schroeder’s spokesman, Bela Anda, said the German chancellor also remains opposed to a new resolution. Schroeder, who won re-election on an anti-war platform last year, urged the world last week to “give peace a chance and avoid war.”

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer insisted over the weekend that peaceful means to disarm Iraq were “in no way exhausted.”