U.S. Exhorts NATO to Face Iraq Threat

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld clashed with French and German officials Saturday over two divergent paths toward disarming Iraq.

The American challenged Europe to join the U.S. in meeting the threat posed by a rogue regime, while his rivals previewed a proposal to boost the authority of weapons inspectors scouring Iraq and use United Nations troops as enforcers.

Far from bridging the diplomatic rift between them, the two sides appeared to harden their stances before an international gathering of security officials here.

Rumsfeld made his most direct pitch so far for Europe to join in preparations for war with Iraq to delegates at the 39th annual Munich Conference on Security Policy, warning that the reticence of some European nations to confront Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is making NATO increasingly irrelevant.

But France, backed by Germany, began floating the European proposal as a way to achieve what one French diplomat called “disarmament by force without war.”

The plan, which is expected to be formally introduced as soon as Thursday, calls for the open-ended deployment of U.S. troops outside Iraq to maintain pressure on the regime, but it would otherwise take control of the showdown with Hussein away from Washington by introducing a permanent U.N. coordinator for disarmament in Iraq and a U.N. court to deal with infractions and human rights abuses, French sources said.

Blue-helmeted U.N. troops -- “a couple of thousand,” according to one official -- would provide muscle behind the inspection teams inside Iraq.

The initiative also would make all of Iraq a “no-fly” zone, extending the northern and southern areas now patrolled by U.S. and British warplanes. Permanent surveillance would monitor Iraqi activities by air, French sources added.

Rumsfeld’s blunt remarks were immediately followed by German Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor Joschka Fischer’s emotional argument against a military assault. Fischer’s views were echoed by more than 10,000 protesters a few blocks away in the heart of European antiwar sentiment.

The tension increased when Rumsfeld complained to German Defense Minister Peter Struck that the proposal for beefed-up inspections was leaked to a German publication before Struck had told Rumsfeld about it.

The incident marked the latest scuffle in a lengthy series of disputes over Iraq that show little hope of being resolved before the United States decides whether to wage war.

“The threat is there for those who will see it. And if the worst were to happen -- and we had done nothing to stop it -- not one of us here today could honestly say that it was a surprise. It will not be a surprise. We are on notice,” Rumsfeld said.

“The lives of our children and grandchildren could well hang in the balance. When they look back on this period, what will they say to us? Will they say we stood still -- paralyzed by a straitjacket of indecision and 20th century thinking -- while dangers gathered? Or will they say that we recognized the coming danger, united and took action before it was too late?”

After Rumsfeld, sometimes combatively, fielded a series of questions, mostly from critical German officials, Fischer struck back with his plea that a military invasion be avoided.

“I am not convinced. That is my problem,” Fischer said in an address to the conference of 250 delegates, 100 official observers and 400 members of the media. “I cannot go to the public and say that these are the reasons, because I don’t believe in them.”

Fischer argued that European public opinion is solidly against a war with Iraq.

“That’s the first critical question that I ask, is why is this being prioritized now?” Fischer said. “To this day, I can’t see why. Saddam Hussein is a terrible dictator, but we have known that for a long time.”

Rumsfeld indicated that whatever the views of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, they will not affect the United States’ decision on whether to go to war. They will, however, show NATO’s dwindling importance in an increasingly dangerous world, he said. Rumsfeld goaded the European audience with a litany of “sad” developments that he said showed that NATO “seems not to be even struggling to regain credibility.”

He also chided the U.N. for letting Iraq defy 17 Security Council resolutions and for electing Libya to head the Human Rights Commission, and he compared the world body to the League of Nations, the toothless forerunner of the U.N. that collapsed in the late 1930s.

Rumsfeld began a private meeting with Struck by demanding why reporters were asking him about the French-German proposal before Struck had mentioned it to him, a senior U.S. official said afterward. Struck said the proposal was not yet ready, “which to say the least was an inadequate response,” the official said. A French diplomat acknowledged that the plan is now “alive and circulating.”

French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin first discussed the proposal informally Wednesday with Security Council members, shortly before Secretary of State Colin L. Powell presented the U.S. case against Iraq to the council, and De Villepin was immediately rebuffed, French and U.S. sources said. Asked about the prospect of intensified inspections as he left the meeting with Struck, Rumsfeld too declared it a nonstarter.

When U.N. troops went into a comparable hostile situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina, they were unable to prevent the evacuation in July 1995 of an ostensible “safe haven” in the city of Srebrenica, and about 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed, a senior U.S. official said.

“You go into a situation that is difficult, where the opposition party is aggressive, you have to have clear lines of authority. You have to have purpose. You have to have a mandate that’s aggressive,” the official said.

The new proposal may take on more life based on the initial reaction from chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix after talks Saturday with the Iraqi government. Blix described the first round of talks as “useful ... very substantial.”

Any progress report by the weapons inspectors indicating new compliance may deflect support building behind the United States -- a point that was not lost on the Americans.

Richard Perle, a high-profile advisor to the Pentagon, called the French and German plan “an excuse for doing nothing.”

“If, on Sept. 11, it had been the Tour d’Eiffel and some other buildings in Paris, Europeans might feel differently,” Perle said.

Also in Munich, Rumsfeld grew visibly heated while criticizing Germany, France and Belgium for blocking a vote on whether NATO will begin planning for the defense of Turkey, a member of the alliance that shares a border with Iraq.

The United States and other nations will ensure that Turkey is not harmed in a war even if NATO is not involved, he said. “What will be hurt is NATO.”

Under NATO rules, the secretary-general, George Robertson, can approve NATO planning to aid Turkey as long as no members speak up. But the opposition from member nations caused Robertson to postpone the measure. Robertson was prepared to invoke a clause that would allow him to press the measure forward as soon as next week, a senior U.S. official said, but it became clear that it will pass next week anyway.

A separate vote would be needed to deploy troops and equipment.

Meanwhile Saturday, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan also pressed the United States to “exhaust all possibilities” to avoid war in Iraq.

“This is an issue not for any one state but for the international community as a whole,” Annan said during a speech at the College of William and Mary. “When states decide to use force, not in self-defense but to deal with broader threats to international peace and security, there is no substitute for the unique legitimacy provided by the U.N. Security Council.”

Warning that war is always a “human catastrophe,” he urged the U.S. to continue working within the U.N. framework.

“The United Nations is most useful to all its members, including the United States, when it is united and works as a source of collective action rather than discord,” he said.

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Hendren reported from Munich and Wright from Washington.