French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin called today for a new high-level meeting of the UN Security Council on Iraqi disarmament in a month's time, and said France saw no immediate need for a new council resolution.
"We don't need, at this time, a second resolution," de Villepin told reporters after addressing the Security Council.
Should the UN inspectors conclude at some point in the future that inspections were failing, then they could come back to the Security Council and present a new report, and then it would be up to the council to decide whether Baghdad was in "material breach" of council resolutions, de Villepin said.
"But that's not the time in which we are today," he said.
He asked that the inspection process be given at least another month by suggesting that foreign ministers of the council's 15 member-nations get together on March 14th to again discuss how inspections were proceeding.
"We will in this manner be able to evaluate what progress has been made and what remains to be accomplished," he said.
