Russia and Pakistan warned Monday that an American attack on Iraq would destabilize the Islamic world, after Secretary of State Colin Powell said that the "first step" to avoid an attack should be the return of UN arms inspectors to Baghdad.
Powell's call, made in a BBC interview not yet fully released, pointed to a split in the administration on how best to force the "regime change" in Iraq sought by President George W. Bush. Vice President Dick Cheney has said that renewed inspections would accomplish little against a government that Cheney has called a "mortal threat" that may be developing nuclear arms in skillfully concealed laboratories.
But Powell said in his interview with the BBC that a return of inspectors should be a "first step."
"The president has been clear that he believes weapons inspectors should return," Powell added.
U.S. allies in Europe and the Arab world have similarly urged a first recourse to the UN before any consideration of military force.
A White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, denied that Powell's comments showed any split. He said that the administration still believed that "unfettered inspections are no guarantee" against the Iraqi threat.
But the Iraqis, perhaps seizing on the mixed U.S. message and the spreading foreign criticism of U.S. war talk, reversed themselves again Monday to suggest an openness to a return of inspectors.
Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said that Baghdad had not ruled out a return of the inspectors - so long as it came in the context of talks to end all U.S.-Iraqi differences - and that he would discuss it Tuesday with the UN secretary- general, Kofi Annan. A day earlier Aziz had called a return of inspectors a "nonstarter," and suggested that their return could be used to manufacture a crisis that Washington could use as a pretext to attack.
Russia, a supporter of the U.S.-led war against terrorism, Monday strongly criticized the talk of a military attack. "Any decision to use force against Iraq would not only complicate an Iraqi settlement but also undermine the situation in the Gulf and the Middle East," said Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov after meeting in Moscow with his Iraqi counterpart, Naji Sabri.
President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, leader of another crucial ally in the war on terrorism, also denounced any U.S. attack on Iraq, saying that it would bring a sharp rise in anti-Americanism among the world's Muslims.
"It is not a question of removing Saddam Hussein," he said on CNN. "It's the question of attacking a country, attacking another Muslim country."
"At the moment all the political disputes, all military actions, all the casualties and sufferings are by the Muslims around the world," he said, so another action against "a Muslim country will certainly have its impact."
Ivanov said that Russia had no evidence that Iraq threatened U.S. security and that only a return of UN inspectors could determine whether Baghdad held weapons of mass destruction.
If the United States were to seek a new UN resolution authorizing an attack - which the Bush administration says it does not need - Russia could block it with a Security Council veto.
Such a veto would appear less likely if the United States proceeded as many of its allies suggest and first seek a return of arms inspectors. If new inspections found proof of an advanced nuclear program - or were blocked by Baghdad - international support for at least a limited U.S. attack likely would rise.
But Ivanov said that he hoped the Security Council would not face the issue of authorizing a strike on Iraq and that "therefore, the right of veto will not be necessary."
Ivanov said Russia could cannot see "a single well- founded argument that Iraq represents a threat to U.S. national security."
"I see no alternative to a return of the international observers," he was quoted as saying. "There is a great possibility for a political regularization of the situation."
Sabri, the Iraqi foreign minister, visited China last week and will head next to Egypt as part of a diplomatic offensive to marshal support against a U.S. attack.
Iraq's vice president, Taha Yassin Ramadan, said Monday in Baghdad that his country would "dispatch envoys to all countries in the world" to "rally them against the aggression." Iraq will hold an extraordinary meeting of the Arab Parliamentary Union on Tuesday in a bid to rally Arab support.
With virtually no evidence of an advanced Iraqi nuclear program made public by the United States, foreign skepticism remains deep.
In stinging criticism Monday, the former South African president, Nelson Mandela, said that he was "appalled" by U.S. policy toward Iraq, Reuters reported from Johannesburg. "What they are introducing is chaos in international affairs, and we condemn that in the strongest terms."
Foreign dissent broadened after Cheney delivered two speeches last week strongly urging preemptive action against Iraq. He suggested that Baghdad was pursuing nuclear weapons and that any delay in ending the threat could prove disastrous.
But Powell's comments to the BBC indicated a far less keen sense of urgency.
The evolving, sometimes convoluted, administration message is being watched attentively abroad, its every twist and turn closely parsed. Powell's restraint has been welcomed by most U.S. allies, though the suggestion of new inspections could simply provide a more circuitous road map to the same goal: clearing the way to attack Iraq to force Saddam out.
But in Berlin on Monday, Defense Minister Peter Struck said that Powell's views left him as a lonely voice in the Bush White House. "Powell is isolated in the president's top advising team," Struck told N-TV television.
Struck and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder have strongly opposed any unilateral U.S. attack on Iraq.
Bush has warned Iraq of unspecified consequences if Iraq does not permit weapons inspectors to return with full freedom to move about the country. But the administration says he has yet to decide which options to pursue, including economic, diplomatic and military.
Close associates of Powell say he has been privately laying out a case to European allies and Arab friends that Saddam poses a threat to the world, The Associated Press reported.
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