The six UN Security Council members that are undecided on the best approach to disarming Iraq have not agreed on a common position to present to the council, Pakistan's UN ambassador said yesterday.
"Not yet. We are trying to work, but there is no certainty that we will be able to come up with anything," Mr Munir Akram told reporters.
Asked if a British side paper put forward to broaden the appeal of the US-British-Spanish draft was now dead in the council, Mr Akram said diplomatic efforts to reach a consensus were still going on.
"I think everything is alive until we all declare that everything is dead," he said.
Council diplomats said the six, Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, Mexico and Pakistan - planned to meet again in an effort to come up with a common proposal after meeting twice on Thursday in a search for shared goals.
No new meeting had yet been set and no draft proposals were being circulated yet, they said.
Under UN rules, a resolution needs nine of 15 votes to pass, with no vetoes.
The resolution is supported by Britain, the United States, Spain and Bulgaria. France, Russia, China, Germany and Syria oppose it. The effort by the six undecided nations to come up with a common draft is being led by Guinea - this month's Security Council president - and Chile, the envoys said.
Diplomats said they broadly agreed on several goals.
Among those were that a resolution should contain no hidden or automatic trigger for war; that it should give Iraq more time to disarm than the US-British-Spanish proposal of a March 17th deadline; and that the council should rely on tests for Iraqi compliance which have been set out by the chief UN arms inspector Dr Hans Blix, rather than by Britain. - (Reuters)