Saudis Vow Support for the UN on Iraq

WASHINGTON – The Saudi foreign minister has indicated that his country would let the Americans use its military bases in a UN-backed attack on Iraq, a sign that Arab countries may be dropping their resistance to an attack on Saddam Hussein.

The Saudi minister, Prince Saud al Faisal, said that if there was a Security Council resolution backing military action, all members of the United Nations would have to honor it.

"Everybody is obliged to follow through," said in a CNN interview from New York that was first broadcast late Saturday.

Saud said he remained opposed in principle to the use of military force or a unilateral attack by the United States, but his remarks seemed to indicate an important shift in Saudi Arabia's posture.

There were several other signs of emerging international consensus that Iraq must take steps to bring itself in line with a decade of UN resolutions – on disarmament, an accounting of Gulf war prisoners and protection of its minorities – or face consequences.

The Lebanese foreign minister, Mahmoud Hammoud, speaking on behalf of Arab foreign ministers who met with the UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, on Saturday, said, "We want Iraq to implement the Security Council resolutions, which will end the current crisis."

President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt announced plans to tour the Middle East to gather support for persuading Iraq to let weapons inspectors back in.

At the same time, Secretary of State Colin Powell and other senior U.S. officials kept up their drumbeat on Iraq. Powell said any Security Council resolution would have to set a deadline for compliance by Saddam, "and not a long deadline, but a deadline that requires him to say he will act."

Speaking Sunday on CBS television Powell added, "We're talking a short time, a matter of weeks."

"This is the key part," Powell said, "that the UN will then say, 'We're going to take action if he fails to take action.' That's what we're looking for."

For months, Saudi Arabia, a vital ally in the Gulf War in 1991, had said it would deny use of its territory for a U.S. campaign against Iraq this time. But in an interview with the London-based Arabic language newspaper Al Hayat, Saud said, "Since Iraq says it does not possess weapons of mass destruction and has no plans to produce any, why doesn't it agree to the return of inspectors to settle the issue, which will go to the Security Council?"

Senior Bush administration officials reacted to Saud's comments on Sunday with both optimism and caution.

"We have seen since the president's speech a rallying of support for his approach, and a coalescence around the idea that the UN must act, and it must act against more than a decade of Iraq's flouting of the will of the international community," an official said, referring to President George W. Bush's address at the United Nations on Thursday. But another official added: "Frankly, we haven't seen the comments in any detail yet. It's for the Saudis to explain, and we can't go into it too much just yet."

Agreement on a Security Council resolution or resolutions that might allow the use of military force – either jointly or by individual UN members – is far from certain, but that is the Bush administration's clear goal.

Elaborating on the kind of language the administration is seeking, Powell suggested that it should be broad enough to encompass military action, citing phrases like "use necessary means," or "member states should feel free."

But, he acknowledged, "that will be the difficult element in any such resolution."

Both he and Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser, said they were open to several possible approaches, including more than one resolution, and would be resuming detailed discussions with member nations when Powell returned to New York for more UN meetings Monday, with the hope of beginning drafting by the end of this week. France, a permanent member of the Security Council, has floated the idea of a two-step process, with a first resolution finding Iraq in violation of past UN demands and requiring compliance, followed by a second on possible military action if Iraq maintains its defiance.

But officials of the Bush administration have indicated deep wariness of that idea, and former Secretary of State James Baker 3d said in an opinion article published in The Washington Post on Sunday, "What is absolutely not acceptable is the idea of two resolutions – one demanding action by Iraq, the second, to come later (maybe), authorizing enforcement." That, Baker said, "would give Saddam Hussein two bites at the apple, first by stonewalling on compliance and then by fighting the enforcement resolution."

He noted that in 1990, the Soviet Union had sought such a course to respond to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, but that the United States had refused.

The Iraqi foreign minister, Naji Sabri, again insisted that any new inspections be tied to the lifting of decade-old UN sanctions. "Iraq's sovereignty must be respected, and the inspections must result in the easing of sanctions against Iraq and the elimination of all weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East, particularly in Israel," he said on German television.

But Rice, speaking on the ABC network, said: "The Iraqi regime can have no say in what is required of it. We've been down that road before. It's done nothing but weaken the resolutions that the Security Council had passed."