White House Steps Up Efforts for U.N. Support

President Bush worked with a handful of allies Saturday to persuade at least nine of the U.N. Security Council’s 15 members to vote to give the United States authority for a war against Iraq.

Playing host to Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar at his Texas ranch, Bush organized a four-way telephone call with prime ministers Tony Blair of Britain and Silvio Berlusconi of Italy to discuss wording of a new Security Council resolution.

British officials said Saturday that after the resolution is introduced in the early part of the week, the United States will give the council “a few weeks” to debate and hold a vote. As it continues its buildup of troops and weapons in the Mideast, the United States is also stepping up its diplomatic efforts to win over reluctant allies.

According to diplomats, the Bush administration is warning council members that they should vote for the resolution or risk being on the “wrong side” of the issue.

“The argument is a little bit of political blackmail,” said a diplomat who asked not to be named. “The message is that there is going to be a war, so the council should be united behind it. If there is a veto or the U.S. goes alone, it will do a lot of harm to the U.N.”

After meeting with Japanese officials to discuss Iraq and North Korea, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said, “We are into a period of intense diplomacy.” Powell told reporters this morning in Tokyo that chief U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix “will be reporting to the council on the 7th of March, and I would assume once he has made that report, everyone would have one last opportunity to make a judgment.”

Most Security Council members have said they favor giving U.N. weapons inspectors more time to work with Iraq on disarmament and are not yet ready to authorize the use of force.

But Bush said Saturday that he was confident they would come around to the U.S. position -- that the time for military action is nearly at hand. The president recalled that last fall, few observers gave his first resolution, known as Resolution 1441, much chance of passing. In the end, after eight weeks of diplomacy, it passed unanimously in November.

“The clarity of vision that took place four months ago, I’m confident, will be in place after the Security Council takes a good look at the facts,” Bush said.

But since then, the composition of the Security Council has changed. The council’s 10 nonpermanent members now include two countries -- Germany and Syria -- that have indicated that they are unwilling to vote for a resolution authorizing force under any conditions.

According to U.N. rules, a resolution passes only if at least nine of the 15 Security Council members approve and none of the five permanent members use their veto. So far, the United States has only four of the nine votes it needs. In addition to itself, it can count on only Spain, Bulgaria and Britain, a permanent member. That means that it must sway five among the uncommitted nonpermanent members -- Guinea, Mexico, Pakistan, Angola, Cameroon and Chile.

It must also persuade the three other permanent members -- France, Russia and China -- not to veto the resolution.

That arithmetic has pushed the Bush administration and its allies into frenetic diplomacy to gain the necessary support. The president phoned the leaders of two crucial council members -- Mexico and Chile -- late Saturday afternoon. Although the overwhelming majority of his fellow citizens oppose military action in Iraq, the Spanish prime minister has become a key intermediary to other world leaders on behalf of the Bush administration.

On his way to Texas, Aznar met with Mexican President Vicente Fox. But after a two-hour meeting, Fox announced no change in Mexico’s position, and Aznar told reporters that he had not tried to twist arms.

“President Fox would not tolerate such pressure, as would be natural, nor would it ever occur to me” to apply it, Aznar said Friday.

The Bush administration made some headway in recent days in persuading Turkey to permit U.S. bases on its territory -- a crucial step in fighting the two-front war the Pentagon is planning. The two sides have reportedly reached tentative agreement on a $15-billion package of immediate aid and loans to help Turkey allay the financial and political costs of cooperating with the United States.

Behind the scenes, the Bush administration is trying to avoid offering similar financial aid or other inducements to win support for its position among Security Council members.

“We think the case is strong on its merits,” a senior administration official said. “We’re looking to our friends to work with us to confront a common danger.... So the question doesn’t arise in those terms.”

One factor that could sway opinion is whether Iraq complies with an order from Blix to begin destroying its Al-Samoud 2 missiles, which exceed U.N.-imposed flight limits, by March 1. There was no official response from Baghdad on Saturday to the order issued Friday. But Bush said that even if Hussein complies, that won’t be enough.

“If Iraq decides to destroy the weapons that were long-range weapons, that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “My question is, why don’t they destroy every ... illegal weapon?”

“Saddam Hussein wants time. And after all, he thinks he will get time, because he has done so -- he has deceived the world for 12 years.... So the idea of destroying a rocket or two rockets or however many he’s going to destroy says to me that he’s got a lot more weapons to destroy, and why hadn’t he destroyed them yet?”

A central problem for many countries, including those that support the United States, is that public opinion around the world strongly opposes any war. But the senior administration official said he believes that will change. “Who isn’t [against war]? War is not a good thing,” he said. “Where public opinion comes out in the end is going to depend on partly the way the issue is framed and partly upon leadership. I am convinced that the case is strong and ... we will be able to start to turn public opinion.”

In the case of Mexico, Tony Garza, the new U.S. ambassador, made it clear that Washington views Mexico’s vote as a test of friendship.

“An old proverb says, ‘In good times, all your friends know who you are, and in times of adversity, you know who your friends are,’ ” Garza said in a speech Friday in Cholula.

But experts say that whether or not it wants to, the Bush administration will have to offer concrete benefits to countries such as Mexico if it hopes to gain broader support for a war. Fox faces crucial midterm elections in June and risks electoral defeat if he and his National Action Party are seen as caving in.

“The elections are what force Fox to straddle the fence, and if he must come down from the fence, it has to be on the side of public opinion -- in other words, against anything but multilateral sanctions,” said Federico Estevez, a political scientist at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico.

Topping the list of things that Mexico might demand in exchange for its vote are changes in U.S. immigration law to legalize the status of 3 million Mexicans believed to be working illegally in the U.S., said Rafael Fernandez de Castro, co-editor of the Spanish-language edition of Foreign Affairs magazine. But Fox’s domestic political considerations and Mexico’s lack of interest in Mideast issues argue against Fox’s siding with the U.S.

“In Latin America, we know exactly how to act and why. In the Middle East, we are a little lost,” Fernandez de Castro said. Many Mexicans expect that an abstention or a no vote will cause at least a chill in the U.S.-Mexico relationship, but they are willing to take that risk.

Another country of particular concern to the United States is Chile, which has sent mixed signals about how it will vote. Foreign Minister Maria Soledad Alvear Valenzuela has urged more time for inspectors to complete their work. But last week, President Ricardo Lagos said “the time limit cannot be indefinite.”

If Chile has been ambiguous up to now, commentators say, it is because it feels caught between two suitors it has been courting for years: the United States and the European Union. In December, Chile signed a free trade agreement with the United States that still needs to be approved by the U.S. Congress. Last month, Chile’s Congress ratified a free trade agreement with the European Union.

Added to the mix is Chilean popular opinion, which as elsewhere in the Americas is firmly against a U.S.-led war that many see as yet another example of “yanqui” intervention.

That may be one reason why Powell in effect apologized to the Chilean public last week in an interview with a Chilean television program.

“It’s not a part of our history that we’re proud of,” Powell said, referring to the U.S. role in the 1973 overthrow of the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende. Powell said that one of the proudest moments of his career was going to Chile at the end of the 1980s and talking about democracy to the officers of the Chilean armed forces at a time when dictator Augusto Pinochet was in power.

Heraldo Munoz, general secretary in Lagos’ Cabinet, said that Powell’s statements were “a positive acknowledgment of an intervention that should have never occurred.”

Although American and British officials have phoned frequently in the last few weeks, Munoz insisted, “No one is twisting our arm.”

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Times staff writers Maggie Farley at the U.N., Hector Tobar in Buenos Aires, Chris Kraul in Mexico City and Sonni Efron in Tokyo contributed to this report.