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...speech comes during a week when Congress is debating a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq and the UN Security Council is considering its own resolution on Iraq. Mid-term elections are also a month away...
...Relatively speaking. They've enjoyed a fair degree of autonomy from Baghdad, and there's a large UN humanitarian infrastructure that has very effectively administered money from the oil-for-food program to fund development. So there's a lot of construction and new business activity - you can see that more clearly in Sulaimaniya, which is livelier than Erbil. There's also a lot more Kurdish-language media now, and Kurds are allowed to study in their own language rather than being forced to speak Arabic, as they were under Saddam. Over the decade you've seen the emergence...
...Baghdad, and are wary of being used simply to set up a legitimate pretext for an invasion already in the works. At the same time, of course, the Security Council members are also painfully aware of Washington's power to implement President Bush's implied threat to render the UN irrelevant by simply ignoring it. And no matter how deep their differences with Washington, they'd rather see the U.S. remaining inside the international system than formally tossing it out to pursue a Pax Americana. Somewhere between those two impulses is a compromise, originating with France but with Russia showing...
...question now becomes whether Washington sees its draft resolution is a negotiating position, or a take-it-or-leave-it offer to the UN. And diplomats report getting mixed messages on that question from the Bush administration, with the State Department reportedly more inclined to negotiate a consensus in the Security Council in the coming weeks, while more hawkish elements hope to truncate the diplomatic detour on the road to a war they see as inevitable...
...imminent congressional resolution looks likely to authorize President Bush to make the choice between continued diplomacy through the UN or going to war. Bush warned Wednesday that if Saddam fails to disarm, "war may become unavoidable." He's been saying similar things for months, of course. The difference, now, may be that soon that call will be the President's alone to make...