The view from France: we've won the argument

Tony Blair should blame Washington, not Paris, for the diplomatic train-wreck in the United Nations, French officials said yesterday. The failure of all efforts at compromise is due mostly to American stubbornness, not French perfidy or back-stabbing, they said.

Stung by British suggestions that Paris had "poisoned" the diplomatic process, France indicated last night that it was open to compromise in the UN, within limits. Dominique de Villepin, the French Foreign Minister, said: "Everything must be tried to preserve the unity of the Security Council and we are working towards that. France confirms its openness to seize all opportunities." But he made it clear that Paris would still not accept anything resembling a war ultimatum while inspections were making progress.

One French official said: "The British are looking desperately for some negotiating space but the Americans will have none of it. Otherwise, a narrowing of British and French differences might be possible."

Although M. de Villepin earlier rejected the list of six "tests" for Saddam Hussein put forward by Britain in the UN, French officials said they saw nothing wrong in the six demands in themselves. France's problem, they said, was with the idea of an ultimatum, or automatic recourse to war.

It would take weeks for Iraq to satisfy the more detailed demands, they said. And yet the US was insisting that Iraq must be given at most a few days. If the tests could be attached to a somewhat longer timetable and uncoupled from an ultimatum, France could discuss them, the officials said.

Otherwise Paris, and the entire international community, was being confronted once again with the same "non-choice" which led President Jacques Chirac publicly to announce his intention to veto on Monday. One official said: "We are told by Washington that the UN Security Council will lose all meaning unless it takes a decision on Iraq but that the UN can only take one decision and that is the decision – for war – taken in Washington months ago."

Nothing that M. Chirac said on Monday should have been a surprise, French officials say. France has followed broadly the same line since its President gave an interview to The New York Times on 9 September. This can be summarised as follows: "While the inspection process is yielding results, it should continue. The UN was set up to prevent wars, not to justify them. The international body must be 'multi-polar', not just an instrument of Washington's will."

This is not a selfish or peculiarly French argument, Paris points out. It is a line broadly shared by everyone from the Pope to The New York Times, from former president Jimmy Carter to the great majority of European public opinion, including in the UK.

France also rejects the complaint from Britain that M. Chirac's veto declaration was a deliberate attempt to sabotage the diplomatic process in the UN.

Britain argues that, once they knew that France was going to veto, the six "swing", or undecided, countries had no incentive to take the difficult decision for war. "Au contraire," French officials say. If they had wanted, the six swing countries could have pocketed the bribes being offered by the US, knowing that France would use its veto anyway.

France argues that the veto is an accepted part of the Security Council machinery of the UN. It was created precisely to set up the kinds of "checks and balances" in the UN system which exist in many national constitutions.

France has used its veto only 18 times before; the US has used its veto 76 times. Washington now argues that a Security Council majority, obstructed by a French veto, would be a "moral majority". This amounts to admitting, French officials say, that Washington has thwarted a moral majority in the Security Council on 76 occasions since 1945.