Washington ? A few words now separate France and the United States from a major triumph or a great disaster in diplomacy at the United Nations. Both nations must bend slightly to achieve the time-honored solution to differences between competing allies: There should be no clear winner and no clear loser in this diplomatic tiff.

That outcome will help ensure that the ultimate loser is Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. He counts on divisions in the Security Council to save his worthless, lying hide and his cache of weapons of terror. He must not be allowed to benefit from arguments that center on procedure more than on goals.

Paris and Washington have been arguing for nearly a month, ostensibly over a new Security Council resolution that will embody President Bush’s challenge to Iraq to disarm completely and immediately or face a resumption of the 1991 Gulf War.

Officials in both capitals say they have no expectation that the Iraqi dictator will abide by a new, effective disarmament resolution. The argument has been over how and when not really if military action to depose the man all Arabs know as Saddam will come, one French official told me this week.

There is also an unspoken Franco-American difference over the capabilities and intentions of the chief U.N. disarmament inspector for Iraq, Sweden’s Hans Blix. But this is likely to become moot if Bush’s strategy of making Saddam’s clear and present lying to the United Nations about weapons of mass destruction the trigger for military strikes. That strategy avoids prolonged wrangling over the details of what inspectors should they get into Iraq do or don’t find.

Until Wednesday, French and American officials were emphasizing publicly their continuing sharp disagreements. The suggestions of conflict had two purposes: To wring final advantage from the negotiations, and to mask how far each side has moved toward the other this week.

This is particularly true for France, which finally seems to have written off Saddam and his Baath regime as no longer viable or useful to French interests.

A French proposal conveyed on Wednesday by Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin to Secretary of State Colin Powell seems to have broken an impasse over U.S. demands that there be only one Security Council resolution, which would include both tough inspection terms and automatic authorization for military action if those terms were not met.

Accepting Bush’s demand for tough conditions, Paris proposed language requiring that the Security Council convene immediately after a report by Blix of Iraqi obstruction to “decide” to ensure compliance “by any means, including the use of force.”

Powell then leapfrogged that proposal and offered the French more than they had asked. The United States circulated a paper within the Security Council Thursday that dropped all reference to the need for a second resolution and to authorization for the use of force.

That leaves Washington free to act if the council does not respond to Iraqi obstruction with a new authorizing resolution. At the moment of decision, Bush’s focus is correctly on getting the right conditions for Blix’s inspection efforts rather than on the argument over automaticity.

The bedrock of the resolution that should emerge soon must be Bush’s demands. Those include protection of Iraqis who talk to the inspectors about violations, and an immediate, complete and truthful declaration by Saddam about the status of his weapons programs once the new U.N. resolution passes. Refusal to make the declaration or lying in it will be the first, immediately recognizable obstruction of the inspection effort and a valid casus belli.

The sudden admission by North Korea that it has been lying about the pledge it gave the Clinton administration to halt its nuclear weapons program in 1994 both complicates Bush’s “perjury” strategy on Iraq and underlines its importance. North Korea’s treachery shows that only a global approach can counter the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. It vindicates Bush’s decision to take Iraq’s defiance to the Security Council, and makes unified international action even more imperative.

Bush has made a concerted effort to give the five permanent members of the Security Council a leading role in counter-proliferation. That effort starts with Iraq. Britain sides with him and China will not oppose those efforts. Russia follows France’s lead for the moment, even indicating it would support a French veto of the U.S. resolution if it happens.

That collision would wreck the Security Council and cost France far more in global influence than any other outcome in the Iraq crisis. The French-American compromise that is now within easy reach is in the interests of both nations, and of the Security Council itself.