Council members who oppose this text will not be resisting some unilateral diktat from the Bush administration; they will be voting to repudiate a U.N. resolution adopted little more than three months ago. No wonder that French President Jacques Chirac, who last fall insisted on the idea of a second resolution, now argues with equal fervor that none is necessary. And that is only the first of his contradictions. In their effort to free themselves from the Security Council's solemn commitments, the French and their German and Russian allies have adopted a position that is as convoluted as the new resolution is simple.

A memorandum distributed by their governments Monday begins by acknowledging the main point: Iraqi cooperation "is not yet fully satisfactory," as required by 1441. Yet rather than follow the resolution's terms, the opponents instead propose a very different scheme -- that of an earlier resolution, 1284, adopted in December 1999. Mr. Chirac's government and that of Russia fought fiercely to block or weaken that resolution, and neither voted for it. Yet now they unashamedly champion the plan, which calls for the inspectors to draw up a list of "remaining disarmament tasks" for Iraq, along with a timeline for accomplishing them. Iraqi disarmament would be limited to those areas stipulated in advance by the inspectors -- thus excluding any stockpiles that have not already been identified -- and there would be no penalty for failing to complete the work. On the contrary, 1284 would mandate that sanctions on Iraq be suspended after 120 days if Iraq is judged to have made "progress" on its assigned tasks. Paris and Moscow already argue that such progress is being made; if their scheme were adopted, they could be expected to demand a lifting of sanctions on July 1, even if Iraq's chemical and biological weapons remained undiscovered.

All this may sound like a legalistic debate over the wording of resolutions, but vital principles lie behind it. Resolution 1441, which the Bush administration painstakingly negotiated with the French and Russians, says what it does because past attempts to disarm an unwilling Iraq with U.N. inspections had failed. Saddam Hussein this time was to be offered a stark choice between immediate voluntary disarmament and "serious consequences," which all understood to mean war. This was a sound strategy, and it might have succeeded had the forceful message not been quickly undermined by the French and their allies. The most damaging contradiction in their position is this: They would insist that the United States act through multilateral institutions such as the Security Council; but they themselves will not support those institutions if the outcome is a sanctioned exercise of U.S. power. That's because their priority is not disarming rogue states, or strengthening world government, or even preventing war per se. It is, rather, to neutralize what the French call the American "hyperpower." When its security is threatened, there is no reason for the United States to accept such paralysis -- especially when it has the unambiguous terms of U.N. resolutions on its side.