Russia says UN plan for Iran is 'first step to war'

Russia will seek the removal tonight of the core of a UK-sponsored draft United Nations resolution on Iran because it fears that it could pave the way to unilateral military action to curb the Iranian nuclear programme. A bruising battle looms in New York at a dinner of foreign ministers of the five UN Security Council veto-holding members, plus Germany, over UN plans to compel Iran to abandon uranium enrichment. The high-stakes talks at the Waldorf hotel will be the first official duty for Margaret Beckett, who replaced Jack Straw as Foreign Secretary on Friday, and could result in an embarrassing climb-down for Britain.

British and US officials have said the core of the draft text is its placement under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which provides for possible sanctions and military enforcement. John Bolton, the US ambassador to the UN, said last week when Britain, France and the US tabled the draft: "The fundamental point is for Russia and China to agree that this is a threat to international peace and security under Chapter VII."

But faced with heated Russian and Chinese objections to the Chapter VII provision at ambassador level, Mr Bolton was saying by Saturday night that he had asked the two countries to come up with another way of making the resolution's demands mandatory. Yury Fedotov, the Russian ambassador in London, said his country opposed the Chapter VII reference because it evoked memories of past UN resolutions on Yugoslavia and Iraq that led to US-led military action which had not been authorised by the Security Council.

(snip)
Mr Fedotov said: "Our position is not much different from Britain and the US. We want Iran's nuclear programme to remain in a peaceful framework, and we need clarification on its past programmes on the questions raised by the International Atomic Energy Agency (the UN nuclear watchdog). But on tactics we have our own views, based on past experience regarding Iraq and Yugoslavia.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article362745.ece

We need to get that nutty bastard away from the UN. Quickly.

after the next Congress is sworn in. He'll then be up again for confirmation. Of course, at probably the first Congressional recess, Bush will reappoint him as it would probably be easier to get Osama Bin Laden confirmed as US UN Ambassador than Bolton.

...and/or the falsification of the intelligence used by the NeoCons to justify the attack on Iraq.

They know that if they give Bush an inch he will take a mile.

Here's hoping those who would wage wars of aggression, have their aggressions contained by the rest of the world, through the UN.

right chimpy?

Will they allow Bush to start another war?

Will they rubber stamp every war funding bill as they have for Bush's imperialistic war on Iraq?

The balance of power in Asia has already shifted away the US. Accordingly, the US elites split up so as not to be tarnished by failed policies. Protocol screw ups like Colbert and McGovern's public attacks are probably not screw ups at all. Some one like Brezhinski doesn't want to be tarred and feathered for a strategy he (and other CFR power brokers) intitially devised for central Asia now that it's a miserable failure. The president and the proto-totalitarian neo con cadre make an easier target now that they have lost a military campaign. Turncoats within the administration will be rewarded for weakening it.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=%20EN20060507&articleId=2401

America's Geopolitical Nightmare and Eurasian Strategic Energy Arrangements


by F. William Engdahl

May 7, 2006
GlobalResearch.ca

Part I: The disintegration of the Bush Presidency

...By drawing attention to Iraq and the obvious role oil plays in US policy today, the Bush-Cheney administration has done just that: They have drawn the world’s energy-deficit powers’ attention firmly to the strategic battle over energy and especially oil. This is already having consequences for the global economy in terms of $75 a barrel crude oil price levels. Now it is taking on the dimension of what one former US Defense Secretary rightly calls a ‘geopolitical nightmare’ for the United States.

• ‘No lobby has managed to divert foreign policy as far from what the American national interest would otherwise suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that U.S. and Israeli interests are essentially identical.’

A Foreign Policy disaster over China

In this context, the recent diplomatic insult from Bush to visiting China President Hu Jintao, is doubly disastrous for the US foreign position. Bush acted on a script written by the anti-China neo-conservatives, to deliberately insult and humiliate Hu at the White House. First was the incident of allowing a Taiwanese ‘journalist,’ a Falun Gong member, into the carefully-screened White House press conference, to rant in a tirade against Chinese human rights for more than three minutes, with no attempt at removal, at a White House filmed press conference. Then came the playing of the Chinese National Hymn for Hu. The ‘Chinese’ hymn, however, was the (Taiwan) Republic of China hymn, not the (Beijing) People's Republic hymn.

It was no ‘slip-up by the professional White House protocol people.

The SCO was created in Shanghai on June 15, 2001 by Russia and China along with four former USSR Central Asian republics-- Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Prior to September 11 2001, and the US declaration of an Axis of Evil in January 2002, the SCO was merely background geopolitical chatter as far as Washington was concerned. Today the SCO, which has to date been blacked out almost entirely in US mainstream media, is defining a new political counterweight to US hegemony and its ‘one-polar’ world.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/050806Z.shtml

Bush Setting up Attack on Iran
By Marjorie Cohn
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Monday 08 May 2006


Last month, Britain's then foreign secretary, Jack Straw, branded the idea of a nuclear strike on Iran as "completely nuts." He said military action against Iran was "inconceivable," and warned his Cabinet colleagues that it would be illegal for Britain to support US military action against Iran.

On Friday, Straw was rewarded for his candor with removal from his position as foreign secretary. Both the Independent and the Guardian in London wrote that Straw's "fate was sealed" after an angry call from the White House to Blair. The Independent reported that friends of Straw believe Bush was extremely upset at Straw's comment that the use of nukes against Iran was "nuts."

When asked a few days ago about the possibility of a nuclear strike on Iran, Bush stated unequivocally, "All options are on the table."

The Bush administration is undoubtedly pushing the draft resolution as a step along the way to its unilateral use of armed force against Iran.