By Akhilesh Upadhyay

UNITED NATIONS, New York, Sept 19:These are days of fast-track diplomacy here at the United Nations headquarters where world leaders have gathered for the annual General Assembly. And right now, it is Iraq – not the United States – that’s on the driving seat.

Last week, US President rallied the world behind him when he decided that Iraq would get one more chance to allow UN arms inspectors to return.

Arab leaders welcomed the news; US allies cheered. Everyone was relieved that the go-it-alone super power had decided to give diplomacy another chance. What followed was intense diplomatic pressure on Iraq to abide by UN resolutions.

By Monday, however, US had been pushed to the back foot.

Iraq had announced that it would give unconditional access to UN arms inspectors-first time in four years. And Russia, France, and China hinted there was no need for a new Security Council resolution, as demanded by US in order to force Iraq into stricter compliance.

“From our standpoint,” said Russian Minister Igor Ivanov Tuesday, “we don’t need any special resolution for that to occur. “All the necessary resolutions, all the necessary decisions about that are [on] hand.”

A day later, The New York Times summed up the new mood in Washington. “That is particularly troublesome to those administration officials,” said a news report, “who believe they have to get through the process in a month or two because military action, if required, would almost certainly have to take place in January or February.”

The underlying argument: The onset of summer will complicate war-plans as it will be difficult for soldiers to wear full chemical and biological protective gear in the desert.

According to experts, by allowing the return of inspectors, Iraq had effectively agreed to Security Council resolution 1284, which sets a much lower threshold for inspections than the Bush administration is currently lobbying for. To begin with, Iraq gets a customary 60-day reprieve as arms inspectors first assess the situation on the ground. And US realizes that the time-line could get further stretched in a time-consuming international diplomacy.

“We’ve really got our work cut out for us,” Kenneth Pollack, an Iraq expert at the Brookings Institution, told The Times. “I’ve always opposed going down the inspections route, because at the end of the day, you are betting that Saddam won’t give in, and his past record always indicated he would give in. What’s so interesting now is that he’s given in at the ideal moment: really early, when it messes us up.”

US Secretary of State Colin Powell said Tuesday that the only way to stop Iraq from messing up this time is through a new UN resolution. “We have seen this game before,” he said calling for a tougher UN stance to satisfy the needs of disarmament.

Analysts say Powell’s failure to rally Security Council behind US will be seen by hawks in the Bush administration-most notably Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld-as futile attempt at multilateralism.

Today the Bush administration will give Congress a proposed resolution that explicitly authorises the use of military force if President Bush concludes diplomacy will fail to get Iraq to keep its commitments to the United Nations, CNN said.

“It’s important that Congress send that message before the UN Security Council votes,” Rumsfeld told the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday. “Delaying a vote in Congress would send the wrong message, in my view, just as we are asking the international community to take a stand and as we are cautioning the Iraqi regime to respond and consider its options.”

Congress is expected to vote on the resolution within weeks, just before they adjourn for the campaigning for mid-term elections.

Secretary General Kofi Annan seemed to have well realised Powell’s quandary-whether to give in to hawkish colleagues or pursue solutions within the UN framework-when he issued a veiled warning to Iraq Tuesday. “They [the world community] would want Iraq to understand that this is not going to be business as usual or a repeat of what happened in the past.”

Iraq probably best understands the US resolve and what the US military machine is capable of. Already, Pentagon announced that it will move half of its Central Command, currently based in Florida, to Qatar by November.

But it will be some time, if at all, before the world rallies behind US for an all-out war against Iraq—as it did in 1991.

France, a veto-bearing member of the Security Council, has explicitly stated that it is in favour of a two-step approach-that Security Council should consider a second resolution authorising military intervention only if Iraq fails on its current pledge to give unconditional access to UN arms inspectors.

“We cannot go for two hares at the same time,” French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said, voicing Paris’ opposition to US position to include both access to UN arms inspectors and option for military intervention in a new Security Council resolution. “We should look for one, we get one. If we look for two, we won’t catch any one.”

“[The Council] will have to decide what they do next,” Annan said Monday while announcing Iraq’s decision to open its door to arms inspectors. “I can confirm to you that I have received a letter from the Iraqi authorities conveying its decision to allow the return of the inspectors, without conditions, to continue their work,” Annan said. Paris argues that the Bush administration’s avowed policy of “regime removal” in Iraq will set a dangerous precedent and could destabilise the world community.

A strong critic of Bush administration’s position on Iraq, Scott Ritter, a former U.N. arms inspector in Iraq, agrees. According to him, the very credibility of the international arms inspection regime is at stake, with Washington tinkering with the arms inspections in Iraq. In a television interview broadcast after the Iraqi announcement to allow the UN inspectors into Iraq, he urged US Congress not to give in to hawkish war cries from the Bush administration.

As one of the biggest holders of oil reserves, Baghdad has come under the clutch of U.S. oil politics, said Ritter.

According to Ritter, because the Bush has specifically authorised American covert-operations forces to remove Saddam, the Iraqis will never trust an inspection regime that has already shown itself susceptible to infiltration and manipulation by intelligence services hostile to Iraq, regardless of any assurances the U.N. Secretary General might give. In a June 19 article in the Los Angeles Times, Ritter asked US Congress to question “the hype and rhetoric emanating from the White House regarding Baghdad…”

David Kay, anther former U.N. arms inspector, has questioned Ritter’s claims, which he says run counter to his early assertions.