Here’s some more on the Franco-German plan (known, it seems as ‘Mirage’, a somewhat unfortunate choice of name) – in English this time. Meanwhile, a reader has kindly written in with a translation of the Spiegel piece. It’s too long to reproduce in its entirety, but the idea seems to be that ‘thousands’ of UN troops would take control of the entire country for years in order to guarantee a “durable disarmament regime.” The US troops already in the region would remain there as guarantors of the UN incursion.

According to the magazine, Iraq would become for all practical purposes a protectorate of the UN,

with Saddam remaining as only the formal head of state. If the Saddam regime were to collapse as a result, that would be “acceptable”, but that’s not the primary purpose of the exercise.

Apparently, Mirage has already been discussed “with other critics of the US strategy”, such

as Mr Simitis, president of Greece (and, for six months, the President of the EU Council), Vladimir Putin, and Chinese President-Designate Hu Jin Tao.