UNITED NATIONS, Sept 12: US President George W. Bush warned on Thursday that “action will be unavoidable” against Iraq unless the United Nations forced Baghdad into disarmament.
Addressing the UN General Assembly, the US president called Iraqi President Saddam Hussein “a grave and gathering danger” to world peace and told the assembly it must enforce its weapons’ inspections resolutions or Saddam might gain and use a nuclear weapon.
Without spelling out the steps the United States might take to remove the Iraqi leader, Bush said that he was willing to go it alone if the international community did not support Washington’s military offensive against Baghdad.
A few hundred anti-war demonstrators protested outside the UN building as President Bush spoke.
While making a case against Baghdad, Bush told the delegates to the General Assembly that the United States had been more than patient with President Saddam.
“We’ve tried sanctions. We’ve tried the carrot of oil-for-food and the stick of coalition military strikes. But Saddam Hussein has defied all these efforts and continues to develop weapons of mass destruction.”
Expressing an apprehension that Iraq already possesses nuclear weapons, he said: “We may be completely certain he has nuclear weapons when, God forbid, he uses one. We owe it to all our citizens to do everything in our power to prevent that day from coming.”
He said the conduct of the Iraqi government was a threat to the authority of the United Nations and a threat to peace. In an effort to involve the United Nations in his expected military offensive against Iraq, he said: “We want the United Nations to be effective and respectful and successful. We want the resolutions of the world’s most important multilateral body to be enforced, and right now these resolutions are being unilaterally subverted by the Iraqi regime.”
As a final warning to Iraq, he said if it wished peace the government in Baghdad must immediately end all “illicit trade” outside the oil-for-food programme, accept the UN administration of funds from that programme to ensure that the money was used “fairly and promptly” for the benefit of the Iraqi people.
He said if these steps were taken, it would signal a new openness and accountability in Iraq and it could open the prospect of the United Nations helping to build a government that represents all Iraqis.
Bush declared that the United States had no quarrel with the Iraqi people who had suffered too long in “silent captivity”.
Liberty for the Iraqi people, he said, was a great moral cause and a great strategic goal. “People of Iraq deserve it.”
He said the United States would work with the UN Security Council to meet a common challenge.
“We will work with the UN Security Council for the necessary resolution but the purposes of the United States should not be doubted. The Security Council resolution will be enforced. The just demands of peace and security will be met. Our action will be unavoidable and a regime that has lost its legitimacy will also lose its power.”
Observers at the United Nations described the speech as unusually harsh, saying that the American president just stopped short of declaring a war on Iraq.
On Wednesday night, the US administration also issued a 50-page dossier on Iraq, enlisting Iraq’s “violations” of UN resolutions and its efforts to make weapons of mass destruction.
“We cannot stand by and do nothing while dangers gather,” Bush declared. “We must stand up for our security and for the permanent rights and hopes of mankind. By heritage and by choice, the United States of America will make that stand.
“You have the power to make that stand as well,” Bush told the delegates to the General Assembly while concluding his speech.
AGENCIES ADD: The US president reeled off a litany of charges against Baghdad, including:
—It retains physical infrastructure needed to build a nuclear weapon; should Iraq acquire fissile material, it would be able to build a nuclear weapon within a year.
—Iraq likely maintains stockpiles of VX, mustard and other chemical agents, and is rebuilding and expanding facilities capable of producing chemical weapons.
—UN inspectors believe Iraq has produced two to four times the amount of biological agents it declared, and has failed to account for more than three tons of material that could be used to produce biological weapons.
—Iraq possesses a force of Scud-type missiles with ranges beyond the 150kms permitted by the United Nations.
“If an emboldened regime were to supply these weapons to terrorist allies, then the attacks of Sept 11 would be a prelude to far greater horrors,” he said.
RESOLUTION: A senior US official said Secretary of State Colin Powell would work quickly on the wording of a new resolution with his counterparts among the five permanent members of the UN Security Council — Britain, France, Russia and China. He is to meet them on Friday.
Aides predicted plenty of debate but hoped that in the end, there would be a new resolution.
Another official said any resolution on Iraq would go far beyond addressing the return of UN weapons inspectors and would demand compliance with a broad range of issues raised in Bush’s speech.
Bush made no specific link between Iraq and the Sept 11 attacks, but said that “our greatest fear is that terrorists will find a shortcut to their mad ambitions when an outlaw regime supplies them with the technologies to kill on a massive scale”.
But he did say: “Iraq’s government openly praised the attacks of Sept 11. And Al Qaeda terrorists escaped from Afghanistan and are known to be in Iraq.”
He argued Iraq represents an imminent threat. “We cannot stand by and do nothing while dangers gather.”
