[Systemz]

I think the major conflict with all the suggestions above is that we're looking for the reasoning as to why France, Russia and China (herein called FRAC) would want to avoid a US-led conflict with Iraq. That's all well and good if these countries were objecting on moral or ethical grounds - hell, it even works if you look at things from a realist paradigm and try to dig out the reasoning behind the moves FRAC makes (certainly in the case of Russia, as they stand to benefit greatly in the long term with my man Saddam in power). The thing is that none of these countries really need to give two shits about the situation in IRAQ - China and Russia have bigger fish to fry in their own countires with the Uighurs and Chechens, respectively, and France participates in the UN embargo on Iraq.

The fact is these situations are endemic of the fact that these countries are looking outwards to look in - Russia is a third-world country, essentially, with a bitchslapped government at the bootheel of corruption, China's got problems with its leader Zhiang Zhemin, who is generally considered a pathetic dinosaur by the Chinese people, and Jaques Chirac in France narrowly won an election against a xenophobe who was calling for "relocation camps" for the arab nationals in France.

Each one of these countries benefits domestically from a distraction from outside - specifically, a good old underdog-type scrap with the good Ol' US-of-A. Gerhard Schroeder in Germany just got reelected as chancellor on an antiwar-with-Iraq platform - all these countries are using the (ahem) strongarm tactics of the USA to silence domestic issues with debate over what is a relatively insignificant issue - the US has no need for legitimacy or support in order to turn Iraq into a smoking crater - so these countries play the "good guy" long enough to garner support domestically, and then switch at the last moment, sweeping the populous along on its new "war footing", and hopefully carving up the spoils of war along the way.