It had given maximum authority to Mr Blix who will seek out Iraq’s weapons

It had given maximum authority to Mr Blix, who will seek out Iraq’s weapons. And it had talked bluntly to Iraq.This was not something achieved only in this chamber and the smaller room where all closed-door council negotiations take place. It was the work also of Mr Bush, Tony Blair, France’s President, Jacques Chirac, and Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin.Their phone lines will get a rest this weekend. And it was the fruit of another, usually unspoken reality of global diplomacy. Few countries dare defy Uncle Sam when it really wants something.This is partly about dollars.

When Yemen voted against the resolution authorising force in 1990 to oust Iraq’s forces from Kuwait, it suffered material punishment. The US cut a $70m (£44m) aid package to Yemen, and Saudi Arabia ejected thousands of Yemeni workers from its territory. And when the Mauritian government recalled its ambassador to the United Nations last weekend, everyone knew why: the envoy, Jagdish Koonjul, had been insufficiently slavish in supporting Washington on the Security Council. Dollars were at stake.Thanks will have to be given to Damascus. Even as the ambassadors filed into the chamber, with its turquoise flock walls and marble wainscoting, no one knew which way Syria would finally jump.As Iraq’s neighbour and a country on America’s blacklist of countries aiding terrorism, it was surely tempted to vote no or, at least, to abstain. But when the president of the council – China’s deputy ambassador, Zhang Yishan – asked for a show of hands, Syria’s delegate, Fayssal Mekdad, did not hesitate.As we looked down on the scene – one that will take its place in the history books – it was as if the Security Council, enfeebled for years by public infighting over Iraq, had been injected with steroids. Its shoulders were suddenly broader; this single resolution had made it resolute for a change.Britain’s ambassador, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, had not been counting on the Syrian vote.

We know this because of the last-minute change he had to make in the text before him, when he spoke, third in line after Mr Annan and the American delegate, John Negroponte. It had the line: “The fact that this resolution has the overwhelming support of council members sends the most powerful signal to Iraq…” He did not say “overwhelming” because, unexpectedly, he found himself able to say “unanimous”.Syria’s Mr Mekdad spoke too. Syria, he said, had taken its decision precisely because of the wisdom of international unanimity – unanimity, he was quick to add, that Damascus would like to see on other issues, such as “the Palestinian cause and the Arab-Israeli conflict”.And, like almost every other country – from Mexico to Ireland to Bulgaria – Syria, he said, had voted yes because it had been promised by Washington and London that the resolution was in no way a green light for American military action and contained no “triggers or “automaticity” in regard to waging war.It was a promise restated by both Mr Negroponte and Sir Jeremy in the chamber. “We heard loud and clear during the negotiations the concerns about ‘automaticity’ and ‘hidden triggers’,” Sir Jeremy intoned. “There is no ‘automaticity’ in this resolution.”But both the United States and Britain wanted the chamber – and Iraq, if it didn’t already – to know that the prospect of war had not gone.