Allies Meeting to Chart Final Steps on Iraq

The White House announced Friday that it would make a “last push” for peace at a summit Sunday in the Azores with allies Britain and Spain, but U.S. officials acknowledged that the United States is now resigned to the failure of its diplomatic efforts on Iraq and is preparing to go to war without a U.N. resolution.

As their focus shifts from diplomacy to coalition-building, President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced plans to soon unveil a long-delayed “road map” to create a Palestinian state and resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Although officials insisted that the move wasn’t linked to Iraq, it may bolster support -- or at least dampen criticism -- among potential Arab allies in the Middle East for military intervention.

In recent weeks, Bush has increasingly sought to link his campaign to disarm Iraq to a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, arguing that ousting Iraqi President Saddam Hussein would bring peace to the Middle East.

National security advisor Condoleezza Rice described this weekend’s summit on the remote Atlantic island territory as a “last push” for Bush, Blair and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar to find a diplomatic solution. “But the moment of truth is coming soon,” she said.

While the leaders prepare to chart the next steps, diplomats will continue over the weekend to try to rally the ninth vote required for the passage of a resolution authorizing force against Iraq. If last-minute diplomacy secures all nine, then Washington is still prepared to ask for a vote at the U.N., officials said.

But with the U.S. rejection Friday of a Chilean proposal to bridge the U.N. Security Council schism, the Bush administration believes that Mexico and Chile, two key votes, will stand together and reject the U.S.-backed resolution.

That would leave the United States, Britain and Spain, the resolution co-sponsors, with no more than eight votes. And with the odds now visibly mounting, U.S. officials predicted that other countries that had privately signaled support would abstain.

If the vote count falls short, the White House is prepared to pull the resolution, despite Bush’s pledge March 6 to press the 15 council member countries to take a stand, whatever the results.

U.S. officials are increasingly talking of the so-called Kosovo option, after the 1999 U.S. decision to bomb Yugoslavia to stop that government’s repression of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo province without getting U.N. approval. At that time, the administration feared a veto from Russia.

Against the backdrop of unraveling diplomacy, the United States also faces difficulties on the military front. A U.S. presidential envoy said the Bush administration told Turkish leaders Friday that it had given up lobbying to use their country as a base to assault Iraq, ending months of intense effort to deploy tens of thousands of troops to a northern front against Hussein.

The envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, delivered the message nearly two weeks after Turkey’s parliament refused to authorize a deployment of 62,000 American troops and after its top political leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, balked at a backup proposal to open Turkish airspace to U.S. missiles and warplanes for a bombing campaign in Iraq.

The Azores summit is meant to finalize strategy and to signal the final push on Iraq -- to Iraq.

“The meeting is to tell Saddam that whatever hopeful sounds he hears out of Paris, the reality of his future will be decided in the Azores -- and he will face that reality within days,” said a well-placed official who requested anonymity.

The United States will also signal that it will not accept any further token gestures by Baghdad to comply with U.N. weapons inspectors.

“What would you say if the Augusta Country Club admitted Elizabeth Dole -- and only Elizabeth Dole? That’s not the same thing as admitting all women,” said an administration official. “It’s the same with Iraq.”

Administration officials say the resolution probably would pass if they negotiated for another month. But the decision to end diplomatic efforts, barring a last-minute miracle, reflects the desire to end the process before the “Saddam stall” gains new momentum.

Iraq has dribbled out weaponry for U.N. inspection teams over the last few months, just enough to satisfy council members such as France and Russia, which would like to see inspections continue, but not enough for the U.S. and Britain, which say they want to see immediate and total surrender of any proscribed weapons.

Nearly two weeks after it was promised, Iraq delivered a 20-page document late Friday to U.N. weapons inspectors detailing its claims to have destroyed 3.9 tons of the nerve agent VX. Iraqi officials said they are finishing a report that explains how they disposed of at least 2,245 gallons of anthrax; they expect to deliver it next week.

Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix has said that Iraq claims to have poured the anthrax into the ground. Inspectors can verify the presence, but not the quantity, of such substances in soil samples, he said.

In the face of such uncertainties, some council members find it difficult to definitively judge whether Iraq is fully disarming, and whether military action is warranted. Several countries, including some Arab allies and even veto holders Russia and China, would prefer that the United States pull the resolution rather than force them to make that decision, diplomats said.

“At this point, it is better to take the resolution off the table,” said Chinese Ambassador Wang Yingfan. “It doesn’t have enough votes here.”

Chile and Mexico floated a new, last-ditch initiative Friday to close the gap between the council’s two sides and to help the council measure Hussein’s cooperation. The initiative proposed three or four weeks for Iraq to complete disarmament tests and be prepared to face “serious consequences” if it failed.

White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer quickly dismissed the time frame as too long and the package as “a nonstarter.”

In a brief Rose Garden appearance, Bush focused his remarks on another proposal. In a six-minute statement, he announced that he intended to unveil a plan to create a Palestinian state by 2005 on land now controlled by Israel in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The president said he would make his recommendations “immediately” upon the confirmation of Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Maazen, as the new Palestinian prime minister. Abbas may be confirmed by the end of next week.

“Once this road map is delivered, we will expect and welcome contributions from Israel and the Palestinians to this document that will advance true peace. We will urge them to discuss the road map with one another,” Bush said. “The time has come to move beyond entrenched positions and to take concrete actions to achieve peace.”

The one caveat Bush mentioned was that Abbas, as prime minister, must wield “real authority” if he is to be “a credible and responsible partner.” Bush previously has called for the removal of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, and there is some question whether Arafat will grant a prime minister that authority.

Bush’s new push for the Middle East initiative may have been an attempt to portray himself as a man of peace -- all the more important just days from the possible start of a war to disarm Iraq. At the same time, championing a Palestinian state is likely to help keep the anti-Iraq coalition of Arab states that Bush has assembled from splintering.

An hour after Bush spoke, Blair met with Arab reporters to pledge his commitment to the Mideast peace process.

“The most important thing we can do is to show evenhandedness toward the Middle East,” Blair said in London. “We are right to focus on Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction, but we must put equal focus on the plight of the people whose lives are being devastated by lack of progress in the Middle East peace process.”

Bush’s announcement on the Mideast plan was widely seen as a kind of diplomatic quid pro quo that will make it easier for Blair to stay on board the push for war by addressing a key concern of the British government -- and his antiwar public.

But it wasn’t known whether the move would provide the prime minister enough political cover if he decides to go to war without a resolution.

Preparing for that possibility, Blair has started framing the threatened French veto as “unreasonable,” saying that he won’t let another country’s political motivations put his own country’s security at risk.

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Wright and Chen reported from Washington and Farley from the United Nations. Times staff writers Richard Boudreaux in Ankara, Turkey, and Janet Stobart in London contributed to this report.