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The Ottawa Citizen Thursday, February 27, 2003 U.S., Britain ensure failure of UN: Dallaire Lack of support for inspectors makes war a virtual certainty, retired general says Mike Blanchfield Retired Canadian general Romeo Dallaire slammed the U.S. and Britain yesterday for making a war against Iraq all but inevitable by ensuring the failure of United Nations weapons inspections. The UN should have "saturated Iraq with inspectors" so they would be able to say definitively whether it is complying with resolutions requiring it to rid itself of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, said the man who commanded the ill-fated UN peacekeeping mission to Rwanda. By giving only half-hearted support to the inspectors, the U.S. and Britain are setting up the UN for failure, leaving the two countries to wage war without its approval, said Lt.-Gen. Dallaire. "You can't on one side, say the UN is screwing it up and we're going to go to war, and on other side not give the UN the resources," the retired lieutenant-general told the Citizen in an exclusive interview yesterday. "They did not give the UN what it needed to beef it up so it would do a good job." Lt.-Gen. Dallaire's support of the UN, which has been criticized as a toothless world body, is particularly striking given the UN ignored his pleas for more troops to prevent the Rwanda genocide that claimed 800,000 lives nine years ago. But Lt.-Gen. Dallaire said he has never blamed the UN for Rwanda, nor does he fault it for failing to resolve the current Iraq crisis. He said the UN is only as strong as the support it receives from the five permanent members of the Security Council. If the U.S. and Britain were ever serious about backing successful weapons inspections, he said, they would have supported sending thousands, not hundreds, of inspectors to Iraq. Lt.-Gen. Dallaire drew a parallel with Rwanda, where he blamed individual Security Council members for thwarting his request for more troops. "That's exactly what happened in Rwanda. It is not the UN that failed. But it is the permanent five in particular. If they don't want the UN to be effective, it won't be," he said. Lt.-Gen. Dallaire conceded the UN has many problems, but it remains the best world body to solve crises such as the one that has pushed the U.S. and Britain toward the brink of war with Iraq. If the Security Council does not authorize the use of force, then the two countries have no right to attack Baghdad without a resolution, he said. "Nobody should be playing outside of that UN body. Any single-nation-led coalition must be viewed with a jaundiced eye." Lt.-Gen. Dallaire praised Canada for continuing to back the UN, and said the government should be willing to stand by the Security Council's decision: "If the UN says go, we go. If the UN says no, it's no." Nonetheless, Lt.-Gen. Dallaire acknowledged that Canada could not afford to alienate the U.S. and Britain, its two main allies. If there is no UN approval, he said Canada should still provide indirect support by sending ships and aircraft to the Persian Gulf region to bolster current operations such as the war on terrorism and the embargo against Iraq. "You do participate, but you participate in a fashion that you're not a main-stage player," he said. "But if this exercise is not fully sanctioned by the UN, you don't send in the army." Lt.-Gen. Dallaire also criticized the American media for beating the drums of war with biased reporting. "You get the feeling they're preparing for a war and their moving the information towards that," he said. "Instead of viewing the UN as an instrument of possible reason and advancing new ideas, they pooh-pooh the UN." Lt.-Gen. Dallaire is to discuss the role of the media in covering tragedies such as the Rwanda genocide in a speech next Wednesday at Carleton University. Next month, he submits the first draft of his long-awaited book on Rwanda, expected to be published in October. http://www.canada.com/search/story.aspx?id=028637ed-69e7-4206-8e82-f6d4d473f 011# _______________________________________________ Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk