Baghdad isolated by decision
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Your support makes all the difference.Iraq reacted with predictable disquiet to yesterday's unanimous vote in the UN Security Council, as the Arab world abandoned the Iraqi leader, leaving him isolated in his bunker.
President Saddam Hussein now has a week to accept in writing the terms of resolution 1441, which sets humiliating shackles on his country and promises military action if he fails to comply with the United Nations disarmament.
"Iraq will certainly study the resolution and decide whether we can accept it or not," the Iraqi ambassador, Mohammed al-Douri, said after the vote yesterday.
All UN resolutions are legally binding on member states, and some diplomats had wondered aloud about the need to insist on a written response from Iraq. After all, it took Baghdad five years to accept the UN offer of a humanitarian plan to ease the plight of the Iraqi people, who were badly hit by sanctions.
Mr al-Douri admitted that he had been surprised by Syria's unexpected decision to join the consensus and vote in favour of the resolution.
Syria, as the only Arab representative on the Security Council, is in effect Iraq's spokesman inside the chamber. But the Iraqi cause was also abandoned by its traditional allies, Russia and China, from which it might have expected an abstention.
Before the vote, the official Iraqi media had kept up a steady drumbeat against the draft resolution under negotiation by the main powers, accusing the Security Council of bowing to US pressure to declare war. The ruling Baath Party newspaper Al-Thawra said on Thursday. "America wants to use this resolution as a pretext and a cover for its aggression on Iraq and the whole Arab world."
The ball is now back in President Saddam's court. His UN ambassador suggested yesterday that "if [Iraq] has the firm conviction that the United States will attack anyway" there may yet be a defiant last stand by the Iraqi leader.
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