Behind Closed Doors... Part 2

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British Prime Minister Tony Blair called in Ian Duncan-Smith, head of the Conservative party and thus leader of the opposition, to inform him Thursday that French President Jacques Chirac was "completely intransigent...(and) that second resolution is now probably less likely than at any time before." More than that, Blair now believes this has become so personal that Chirac is out to destroy his political career. The two men have never got on, and had a furious exchange late last year with Chirac spluttering "I have never been spoken to like that." But the feud has now become white hot.

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It was not just courtesy that led Blair to call in Duncan-Smith, a loyal and patriotic former Guards officer who will tell his party to vote for Blair over Iraq even if half the Labor party looks like abandoning the prime minister who led them to two successive landslide election victories. If his votes are required to keep Blair in office, Duncan-Smith will ask for -- and probably get -- a seat on the British war cabinet that is now being formed. There is, after all, a vacancy on the war cabinet of the Afghan campaign -- Development Minister Clare Short, who is pledged to resign if Blair goes ahead without a second U.N. resolution.

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Somali informants tell security officers in Nairobi to expect a bomb blast from an al Qaida cell in Kenya if war starts in Iraq -- and maybe even if it doesn't. Places patronized by foreigners, including cinemas and a shopping mall with ground floor arcades wide enough for a car, are the target, says a British security source who declines to be named. Western aid workers in Somalia are also feeling the heat -- they have been ordered to leave by Friday, one of them told UPI. Threats in Kenya and Somalia certainly are not idle talk -- suicide bombers thought to have come through Somalia blew up a car at a tourist hotel on Kenya's coast on Nov. 28, killed 11 Kenyans, three Israelis. And it's similar "chatter" to that heard by security officers in places like Rome and Pristina, Kosovo, before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in New York.