Two centrist Democrats -- Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut and Evan Bayh of Indiana -- quickly joined forces with Republican Senators John McCain of Arizona and John Warner of Virginia and introduced in the Senate the version of the resolution that the House and White House had agreed to.
Mr. Negroponte said the timetable included submission of a new version of the resolution, the fourth in two weeks, to the Council on Monday.
By a show of credentials, Mr. Buchanan's opponents joined his supporters to kill a watered-down version of the resolution.
In fact, Mr. Lieberman joined with two Republican senators, John McCain of Arizona and John W. Warner of Virginia, in introducing in the Senate a version of the resolution that the House and White House had agreed upon.
(Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama voted for a lighter Democratic version of the resolution, but Mrs. Clinton voted against the final Republican measure and Mr. Obama skipped the vote as a protest. You might say they voted for it before they voted against it).
Originally drafted by Egypt, the original version of the resolution had been supposed to go to a vote on Thursday night, but was withdrawn by Sisi under pressure orchestrated by Israel.
James Bopp Jr., the conservative from Indiana who proposed the "purity" resolution, asserted that the latest version of the resolution was even better than the one he suggested, a claim that others disputed.
Here's why: One of the most important elements in the Senate version of the resolution authority provision is that shareholders, and potentially debtholders, could be completely wiped out in the event that the government took over their institution.
The French foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, appearing at a news conference with his German and Russian counterparts, Joschka Fischer and Ivan Ivanov, said last night that the latest version of the resolution put the United Nations "back in the game," adding that the United Nations special representative will now have a "tangible and independent role".
The version of the resolution expected to pass on Wednesday leaves open the option of war as a last resort, while the much more strongly worded original draft opposed allowing President Bush to unilaterally declare war against Iraq without the authority of the United Nations.
