Chirac 'to accept deadline for Iraq to disarm'
French President Jacques Chirac today said he was willing to accept a 30-day deadline for Iraq to disarm – provided the move was endorsed by the chief UN weapons inspectors.
Speaking before US President George W Bush was to hold an emergency summit with his top allies backing war, Chirac said the inspectors will be telling the Security Council next week that they believe it is possible to disarm Saddam Hussein peacefully.
“One month, two months, I am ready to accept any accord on this point that has the approval of the inspectors,” Chirac said in an interview aired on CNN, extracts of which were released by the president’s office in Paris.
The full interview is to be aired on CBS’ “60 minutes” at midnight GMT, Chirac’s office said.
Asked specifically whether he would accept a 30-day deadline, Chirac said “everything the inspectors propose should be accepted.”
The president’s comments – backing away from a 120-day period outlined in a joint Russian-French-German memorandum submitted earlier to the Security Council - was a clear move to present his case against war before Bush meets in the Azores islands with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Spain’s Jose Maria Aznar.
The interview also comes a day after France, Russia and Germany issued a fresh declaration calling for the Security Council to set a timetable for Saddam to disarm and rejecting war.
Chirac reiterated his view that inspections were producing results.
“Important progress has been made, every day Iraqi arms are being destroyed,” he said. “The inspectors believe, and they will say so next Tuesday, that there is a possibility of reaching the objective (of disarming Iraq) without a war.”
Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix and Mohamed El Baradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, are expected to deliver their latest report to the Security Council on Tuesday.
Chirac has been leading opposition to war and blocked a US-British proposed resolution at the United Nations setting a March 17 deadline for Saddam to disarm or face war. France’s tough anti-war stance is supported by Russia, Germany and China.
French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, meanwhile, said proposals at the United Nations to speed up the peaceful disarmament of Iraq were being stonewalled by the US military’s inflexible timetable for an invasion of Iraq.
In an interview published in weekly Journal du Dimanche, de Villepin said he hoped the Azores summit will not “give way to a logic of war”.
He said proposals such as one put forward by Chile to give Baghdad three weeks to come clean on its illegal weapons programmes “come up against the acceleration of the (US) military timetable.”
De Villepin was alluding to the clear preference of US military commanders not to send the 250,000 US and British troops massed around Iraq into battle during the stifling summer heat and choking sandstorms.
On Saturday, de Villepin said his country would accept “a very tight timetable” for Iraqi disarmament – but not an ultimatum that would automatically trigger war, as Washington wants.
