UNITED NATIONS'Less than a week after the unanimous approval of a U.N. resolution on disarming Iraq, Washington already faces conflict with other Security Council members'and within the Bush administration itself'over the interpretation of what should trigger an attack on the country.
Although U.S. officials pledged last week that Resolution 1441 contained no \hidden triggers"" for military action, hawks in the National Security Council and the Pentagon have been arguing that the bar for war with Baghdad should be lowered'and Iraq's ""no-fly"" zones are a key point of dispute.
If Iraqi forces continue their routine potshots at U.S. and British aircraft patrolling the no-fly zones in the north and south of the country, or if Iraq leaves something off the list of weapons-related material that it is supposed to deliver Dec. 8, they argue, that should be enough to ask the Security Council to consider Iraq in ""material breach"" of the resolution'a prelude to military action. Even Iraq's letter Wednesday accepting the terms for weapons inspectors has drawn U.S. fire.
But that's not what the rest of the Security Council has in mind.
""The U.S. does seem ... to have a lower threshold than others may have"" to justify war, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Wednesday in Washington before meeting with President Bush. ""I think the discussions in the council made it clear we should be looking for something serious and meaningful.""
In the eight weeks of hard-fought negotiations over the resolution, the United States reassured the other council members that it didn't intend to pounce on the slightest infraction of the resolution but would consider a pattern of obstruction and obfuscation as the cause for action.
In fact, diplomats dickered for two days to substitute an ""and"" for an ""or"" in the text to ensure that a simple omission from Iraq's weapons declaration would not be considered a breach.
After the resolution passed, France, China and Russia circulated a document reaffirming the U.S. statement that the resolution did not grant the automatic use of force.
But on the same day, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials said that they regard Iraq's targeting of U.S. and British aircraft, which have been patrolling the U.N.-declared zones for more than a decade, to be a violation of the resolution.
