'A lot at stake' in U.N. debate

However the words read or the bombs fall in the end, the Security Council's long, painful haggling over Iraq will help shape the United Nations of the future, just as decisions a decade ago, under another President Bush, transformed the world body.

"This is a defining moment," Karl Kaiser, a leading German commentator, said of the upcoming U.N. vote. On one hand, Kaiser said, Security Council members risk failing to disarm Iraq, while on the other they risk ceding U.N. power to Washington.

"The organization has a lot at stake here," agreed Bruce Russett, a Yale University U.N. scholar, who pointed to a principle accepted by the current President Bush's father before the 1991 Gulf War -- that only the U.N. council can legitimize a war waged other than in self-defense.

"In a way it goes beyond Iraq. It goes to defending the principles of international law," said French scholar Dominique Moisi, whose country leads the resistance at the United Nations to the U.S. approach on Iraq.

The Security Council, after almost two months of tough bargaining, may vote within days on a resolution setting terms under which U.N. inspectors will return to Iraq, after a four-year absence, to dismantle any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons programs. The resolution will include, in some uncertain form, a threat of force if the Iraqis balk.

Certain threat

Twelve years ago, the U.N. threat to Iraq couldn't have been more certain: Get your invasion force out of Kuwait or face attack from a global army.

Then-President George Bush, a former U.N. ambassador, had turned instinctively to the Security Council to rally world governments against Baghdad's aggression.

The U.S. urge to "go unilateral" didn't disappear entirely in 1990. At one point, Washington decided to clamp a naval blockade on Iraq, an act of war. But the U.N. leadership prevailed on Bush to wait, instead, for Security Council authorization.

By Feb. 27, 1991, with U.N. blessing, a U.S.-led multinational army drove the Iraqis from Kuwait.

The American superpower did exercise its singular powers at times -- for example, withdrawing $24 million in annual aid from Yemen, an impoverished U.N. member, to punish it for opposing anti-Iraq resolutions.

By contrast, the younger Bush's approach on Iraq was demanding and combative at first. He told the assembled U.N. delegates in September they would be "irrelevant" if they didn't act decisively -- that is, authorize Washington to wage war against the Iraqis whenever it decided they were hiding forbidden arms.

Few U.N. members saw the urgency, however, or wanted to hand the U.S. government blanket authority to judge Iraq and wage war.

The French, who can veto council resolutions, proposed a two-step process: send the inspectors back to Iraq under one resolution and then reconvene to consider military action against Iraq, via a second Security Council resolution, if the inspectors run into problems.

Then week by week, in private talks, the Americans began bending to the two-resolution track, also favored by veto powers Russia and China.

Final wording isn't worked out, and U.S. officials still talk of go-it-alone bombing and invasion if they see fit in the end. But the approach and tone have softened considerably.

"It is a significant message, in fact, from Washington, although nobody in the administration has been prepared to articulate it," said David Malone, a former Canadian U.N. ambassador who now heads the International Peace Academy in New York.

"It does represent a significant climbdown from the unilateralist rhetoric."

In a telephone interview from Berlin, where he heads the German Council on Foreign Relations, Kaiser said the two-resolution track reaffirms the pivotal role of the United Nations in today's world. "In that sense, I think, France, Russia and China reflect the overwhelming feeling of the international community."

It reflects the feeling of many Americans, too, said Moisi, of the French Institute of International Relations in Paris. "The resistance to war in America is probably bigger than we might have anticipated in Europe."

Moisi sees another possible message, too, in the newly deliberate, accommodating American approach.

"At some point, you might wonder whether the United States is truly determined to go to war or not," he said.