Vote on Iraq May Come Next Week

Despite wavering votes among key countries and Russia’s hardening opposition, the United States and Britain intend to call for a U.N. Security Council vote next week on their resolution endorsing a war against Iraq, according to U.N. officials.

The Bush administration is also considering the possible use of an ultimatum to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein -- either to disarm or to step aside, possibly with a deadline -- as one element of a final strategy, U.S. officials said.

In the meantime, the administration said Tuesday that even the risk of a veto would not necessarily lead Washington to withdraw the resolution, in part because forcing a vote might lead key countries to change their previously negative positions.

“We’re coming to a Yogi Berra moment: When you come to a fork in the road, you have to take it, and putting people in that position may lead them to do something other than veto,” a senior State Department official said.

“It’s all about facing the reality of the whole story coming out about Iraq hiding weapons -- and not wanting to be on the wrong side of reality when someone finds an undeclared chemical weapon shell,” the official said.

U.S. calculations on what will go into the final Security Council vote led Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in a blaze of interviews with the European media Tuesday, to talk confidently about the controversial resolution.

“I am increasingly optimistic that if it comes to a vote, we will be able to make a case that will persuade most of the members of the Security Council to vote for the resolution,” Powell told France 2 television.

Iraq’s latest pledge to provide new information on biological and chemical weapons to U.N. inspection teams will not affect the U.S. position, Powell said.

“It changes the propaganda battle, but it doesn’t change reality. Reality is that they are still trying to deceive, they are still trying to send us down rat holes. Reality is that they have not made a strategic decision to comply with [U.N. Resolution] 1441” on total disarmament, he told Britain’s ITN television.

Powell also warned not to underestimate Hussein’s ability to “play” to the world’s preference for peace as a means of retaining any weapons of mass destruction he may possess.

As a result, now is the “appropriate” time to call for a vote in the Security Council, Powell told Germany’s RTL television. The vote would follow the pivotal progress report by chief weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei that is due Friday at the council.

The schedule for a vote would allow the White House to keep to the tentative time frame for launching an attack on Iraq, probably later this month, U.S. officials said. One big hitch, however, remains the Turkish parliament’s failure to support a U.S. request to use military bases in Turkey as a staging area for 62,000 troops to open a northern front against Iraq. Waiting to see whether the parliament will vote again could force a slight delay, they added.

Army Gen. Tommy Franks, the Central Command leader who would run any war, met Tuesday with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and is expected at the White House today to go over military options, as the administration keeps up its diplomatic hard sell.

The weekend vote by Turkey’s parliament, where the resolution allowing use of the bases failed to pass by the required number of votes because of abstentions, is now reverberating politically. Some U.S. officials fear that the Turkish vote is undermining Washington’s campaign to win Security Council approval.

“Turkey’s rebuke had a spinoff effect everywhere,” said a well-placed U.S. official who requested anonymity. “It’s emboldened Russia to talk about its veto power, and it’s weakened the knees of some of the swing votes. Few have any interest in publicly supporting us for the time being.”

Russia’s top diplomat said Tuesday that Moscow would not back any move that increased the prospects of conflict. “If the situation so demands, Russia will of course use its right of veto as an extreme measure,” Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov told the BBC before a meeting with his British counterpart in London.

“The Iraq question is precisely that sort of question when permanent members of the Security Council should not abstain.”

Ivanov, who called for the U.N. weapons inspectors to set their own timetable and a binding deadline for disarmament, rejected the U.S. and British assertion that previous resolutions already authorize the use of force. He warned that only U.N. unanimity would lead to success in dealing with Iraq.

Yet after talks with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, Ivanov preempted journalists’ questions by announcing that the two envoys had not discussed Moscow’s veto. He also said that Russia was “carefully listening to our partners who have different positions.”

Russia is proving to be one of the two most critical question marks in the Security Council vote count. Despite its tough talk, U.S. and U.N. sources question whether Russia, a permanent member of the council, would exercise its veto if the United States rallied the nine votes needed for passage -- in part because of potential damage to relations with the U.S.

The other critical question mark is Mexico, which could prove to be the ninth vote. Before the setback with Turkey on Saturday, the resolution’s co-sponsors -- the United States, Britain and Spain -- had public support from Bulgaria and varying degrees of private support from Pakistan, Angola, Cameroon and Guinea, for eight votes.

Powell held two rounds of unpublicized talks with new Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez on Saturday and Monday in an attempt to win over one of the pivotal swing votes among the elected Security Council members.

President Bush told U.S. regional newspapers Monday that he expects Mexico to vote with the United States, although U.S. officials said Tuesday that Mexico so far remains uncommitted.

But in a move designed to preempt the United States, U.N. members opposed to using force say they will try to use the Blix report Friday to press for ongoing inspections, U.N. sources said.

One of the 10 rotating Security Council members said Blix would be asked to outline his inspections agenda through May and list specific tasks that remain, U.N. envoys said.

Breaking his recent silence on Iraq, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Tuesday that war would be “a human catastrophe” and should be considered only when all other possibilities for “peaceful settlement have been exhausted.” And he called Baghdad’s destruction of some of its banned Al-Samoud 2 missiles “a positive development.”

In Iraq, soldiers crushed only three of the banned rockets Tuesday, compared with six on each of the two previous days. The ostensible reason was the occasion of the Islamic New Year. To mark the holiday, Hussein issued a defiant message Tuesday, telling the Iraqi people that they will triumph over their adversaries and that the U.S. “arrogance” that seeks to enslave them will be defeated.

The New Year’s message, heavily laced with appeals to religion and passages from the Koran, appeared aimed at preparing citizens for the war that most people in Iraq consider all but inevitable.

“You the Iraqi people will be victorious, armed with faith, and the despots will be defeated and arrogance will not benefit them,” Hussein said.

Saying that the United States has set itself up as a new god and will be punished for it, he said, “Believers will triumph over tyranny and its accomplices.”

In addition to the three Al-Samoud missiles destroyed as U.N. inspectors looked on, bringing the total to 19 destroyed by bulldozers since Saturday, workers crushed a missile launcher and five illegally imported rocket engines, U.N. spokesman Hiro Ueki said.

Iraq still possesses about 100 of the missiles, including those not yet completed. It met a March 1 deadline set by Blix to begin the missiles’ destruction but has not hidden its reluctance to eliminate a weapon that could be useful in any upcoming war.

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Times staff writers John Daniszewski in Baghdad and Janet Stobart in London contributed to this report.