US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld headed back to Washington from a brief European tour Sunday as US officials lashed out France and Germany for allegedly leaving them out of a joint plan to disarm Iraq.
Senior American officials stressed that they were deeply unhappy at being told of the reported plan, dubbed "Project Mirage", only hours before Rumsfeld was due to fly out of Munich, where he had been attending a high-level security conference, AFP reported.
Paris, however, insisted that no specific plan had been discussed by France and Germany and that its foreign minister had already raised the general idea at the Security Council last week.
Rumsfeld quizzed German Defence Minister Peter Struck over press reports on the plan during face-to-face talks late Saturday -- and was told "we're not ready to talk to you about it."
"We're now making the point to every French and German we can find, that's not the way to have a winning hand with the United States," the U.S. official told AFP.
"If France and Germany are preparing a plan... and Rumsfeld has just met a million Europeans and no one told him about it except the press, then that is not the way to begin the conversation," he added.
The German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel reported that the plan would focus on a de facto takeover of Iraq by UN troops who would supervise disarmament of Iraq's alleged program of weapons of mass destruction.
A draft of the plan, which would make the whole of Iraq a no-fly zone, had been passed on to China and Russia and Greece, which holds the rotating EU presidency, it added in its upcoming Monday edition.
The senior US official said that when Rumsfeld questioned Struck about it, the German minister replied that "we're talking about it with the French, but we're not ready to talk to you about it."
Rumsfeld said he had not been officially informed of the initiative. "I heard about it from the press. No official word. I have no knowledge of it," Rumsfeld told journalists after the meeting with Struck.
French Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said no specific plan had been discussed by Berlin and Paris "to my knowledge."
She said French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin had already set out a series of proposals at last Wednesday's Security Council meeting. They included giving UN weapons inspectors supplementary means to complete their mission, such as extra staff, access to surveillance technology and more personnel on the ground to ensure weapons production could not be recommenced at suspected sites.
While not wanting to confirm the report in Der Spiegel, a German government spokesman said there were "thoughts in common to find peaceful alternatives to a military resolution to the Iraq conflict."
The magazine also said UN weapons inspections would be tripled, a new wave of sanctions imposed on Iraq and efforts intensified to combat contraband oil smuggling. (Albawaba.com)
© 2003 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
