British Prime Minister Tony Blair: "If ... [Saddam Hussein] is not stopped now, the consequences to our future peace are real and fundamental." (Reuters)

By William Drozdiak
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, December 17, 1998; Page A29

BERLIN, Dec. 16 – As the United States and Britain embarked on an intensive campaign of airstrikes against Iraq tonight, Russia, France and China challenged the need for punitive bombing raids and urged a show of patience until the U.N. Security Council could sort out conflicting reports about Baghdad's cooperation with U.N. weapons inspectors.

The disparate reactions among the Security Council's leading members as to how to respond to Iraq's persistent defiance of U.N. efforts to root out weapons of mass destruction demonstrated the lack of consensus in the world regarding Iraq's behavior.

And in virtually every capital, the sudden scrambling of jets and cruise missiles by the United States and its closest ally raised inevitable questions about whether President Clinton was rushing to judgment to disrupt the looming impeachment vote by the House of Representatives.

At U.N. headquarters in New York, where the Security Council met to discuss the crisis, Secretary General Kofi Annan expressed regret tonight that the confrontation over weapons inspections had escalated into violence.

"However daunting the task, the United Nations had to try [to forestall an attack], as long as any hope for peace remained," he said in a statement shortly after the raids began. "I deeply regret that today these efforts have proved insufficient."

In London, Prime Minister Tony Blair announced the raid about 15 minutes before Clinton, using virtually the same language as the president did in his subsequent speech.

"There is no realistic alternative to military force," Blair said, standing beside a brightly decorated Christmas tree at his official residence. "We have exhausted all other avenues.

"Our quarrel is not with the Iraqi people. Our quarrel is with [Saddam Hussein] alone and the evil regime he represents."

The raid was supported by almost all points on the British political spectrum. A few hours before the raid, William Hague, leader of the opposition Conservative Party, endorsed the use of military force, if required, and added: "It must now be a primary objective of Western policy to remove Saddam Hussein once and for all."

Blair and his aides seemed to take special pains to refute any suggestion that the timing was driven by Clinton's domestic problems. "Richard Butler had promised to deliver his report in about a month," Blair said, referring to the Australian who heads the U.N. weapons inspection program. "It came out last night, on time and as scheduled. . . . The threat is now. If, therefore, [Saddam Hussein] is not stopped now, the consequences to our future peace are real and fundamental."

Blair's spokesman, Alastair Campbell, said that in transatlantic telephone conversations today Blair agreed with Clinton that the impeachment issue should have no bearing on policy toward Iraq. According to Campbell, Blair said that "just as it would obviously be wrong for any major step to be taken because of its impact on domestic politics, it would be wrong not to act because it might later be said that this was due to political concerns."

While Britain was the only major ally that was expected to participate in any bombing raids, Germany expressed its understanding for the need to launch military strikes if only to maintain credibility. After the raids began, a spokesman for Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said the government regretted the strikes but blamed Baghdad for inviting them.

"The Iraq government was warned that the international community could not look away" from its continued defiance of U.N. weapons inspections, the spokesman, Uwe-Karsten Heye, told German radio. "The German government regrets that it had to come to the military measure."

Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi, whose country is the United States' principal Asian ally and was the biggest Asian importer of Iraqi crude oil before Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, predictably contributed his support for the action.

But the messages from Moscow, Beijing and Paris were far from supportive, raising clear challenges to the need for rapidly resorting to the bombing option before the nature of Iraq's behavior regarding the arms inspections could be debated within the Security Council.

Russia disputed the damning report by Butler, released late Tuesday, that triggered the early removal of all U.N. weapons monitors from Iraq as the prelude to tonight's strike. While calling for full compliance with weapons inspections, Russia has been far more indulgent toward Baghdad's behavior than the other major powers.

[Russian President Boris Yeltsin said on Thursday the airstrikes "crudely violated" the United Nations charter and he called for them to be halted immediately, according to a Reuters news agency report. In a statement issued by his office, Yeltsin said the military action was "fraught with the most dramatic consequences" for the Persian Gulf region and that a diplomatic approach was the only way to resolve the Iraq problem.

[Yeltsin said the action "evokes the most serious concern, a feeling of dismay and deep alarm" and had no justification in U.N. Security Council resolutions on Iraq.

[Declaring the action had come just as the Security Council was considering the Iraqi problem, Yeltsin demanded that Washington and London "put an immediate end to military actions, show restraint and prudence, and not allow a further escalation of the conflict."]

[In Beijing on Thursday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi said China was "very displeased" with the attack, according to Reuters.]

France expressed regret that Iraq had not cooperated with U.N. weapons inspectors. But in a statement issued shortly after the attacks began, the government said it "deplores the escalation which led to the American military strikes against Iraq and the grave human consequences which they could have for the Iraqi people," Reuters reported from Paris.

France lamented the fact that the evacuation of U.N. personnel from Iraq was not preceded by thorough consultations within the Security Council, "as should normally be the case," a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

Staff writer John M. Goshko at the United Nations and correspondents Anne Swardson in Paris and T.‚R. Reid in London contributed to this report.