February 20, 2002	Wednesday	Zilhaj 7, 1422

WASHINGTON, Feb 19: Possible US policy options on Iraq will be on top of the list of subjects for discussion during Vice- President Richard Cheney’s proposed Middle East tour next month.

Reports here on Tuesday suggested that no decision had been made by the Bush administration so far about how to proceed against President Saddam Hussein, whose displacement from power is now a declared US objective.

President George Bush’s remark in his State of the Union address describing Iraq, Iran and North Korea as comprising an “axis of evil” had raised alarms throughout the world that a preemptive strike against Iraq particularly could be imminent.

But senior officials are still said to be debating the most feasible course to follow, whether to carry out a military invasion, support a local insurgency, back a coup, or undertake a combination of all three.

A decision may await the Middle East visit of Cheney, for whom it will mark the first major initiative abroad since the Sept 11 attacks and his virtual disappearance from the public scene into forced isolation in a secure location.

Cheney is said to have a rapport with Gulf leaders going back to his tenure as defence secretary during the Gulf War in 1991, and The Washington Post says it is unlikely that someone of the vice-president’s stature would visit the region unless he had concrete plans to share.

There has been resistance to the idea of military intervention in Iraq from Arab countries, America’s allies in Europe and from Russia, whose leader, Vladimir Putin, Bush is scheduled to meet in May.