January 23, 2003	Thursday	Ziqa’ad 19, 1423

LONDON-WASHINGTON-PARIS: George Bush and Tony Blair were on Tuesday in danger of fracturing the international coalition on Iraq when they declared that Saddam Hussein was not cooperating with the UN weapons inspectors, and time was running out for him.

In a significant hardening of the US and UK position, both Mr Blair and Mr Bush claimed that a pattern of non-cooperation will represent a breach of the UN resolutions and justification for military action.

With Mr Blair admitting that his task of holding the coalition together was becoming tougher, the French, Russians and Chinese all insisted the UN weapons inspectors needed more time to do their job. All three security council members said that next Monday’s report to the UN by the weapons inspectors chief, Hans Blix, must not be taken as a trigger point for war.

For the first time the French foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, talked openly of wielding the French veto if necessary. “We believe that nothing today justifies envisaging military action,” he said.

Revealing the behind-the-scenes diplomatic battle over the timing of any war, Mr Bush said: “Surely our friends have learned lessons about the past. Surely we have learned how this man [Saddam Hussein] deceives and delays. He’s given people the runaround and time is running out.

“He’s been told to disarm for 11 long years. He is not disarming. This business about more time. How much more time do we need to see clearly he’s not disarming? This looks like a rerun of a bad movie and I’m not interested in watching.”

The US deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage, was equally decisive. “There is not one sign that the regime has any intent to comply fully with the terms of resolution 1441,” he said.

The British are privately confident the harsher Washington rhetoric does not imply that the US will demand the UN backs war next Monday. The UK foreign secretary, Jack Straw, will today meet Colin Powell, the US secretary of state and leading dove, to urge the US to show restraint and instead amass further damaging evidence that will make a war more acceptable to a skeptical world.

Mr Blair, quizzed on Iraq by the British parliamentary liaison committee for two and a half hours, also insisted that Saddam was not cooperating with the weapons inspectors, saying that no one seriously believed the 12,000-page dossier submitted by the Iraqis on its weapons. He said bluntly: “I simply point out that at the moment the inspectors are saying that the Iraqis have not been cooperating properly.”

He stressed that at some point the security council might have to accept that the Iraqi non-cooperation in itself represented a material breach. There were two different sets of circumstances which could amount to a material breach of resolution 1441, Mr Blair said. “There is a set of circumstances in which you find the conclusive proof, and there is a set of circumstances in which a pattern of behaviour develops of non-cooperation.

“The first is easy to describe as a category. The second requires a more considered judgment ... It isn’t a game of hide and seek. It is not a game where the inspectors are supposed to go in and if they find the stuff they win, and if Saddam conceals the stuff he wins. They are not a detective agency.

“The judgment that you need to make, and it is a matter of judgment itself as to the time at which you need to make this, is: is he co-operating?”

He repeatedly insisted that Britain will be willing to go to war without UN support, but added it was highly desirable to have that backing. He also expressed confidence that the UN would back a war if clear evidence of a breach was put in front of it. Throughout, he gave the impression of a man completing the final details of preparing for war, including preparations for possible chemical attacks on British troops.

In the only glimmer of hope for peace, he suggested that President Saddam’s regime was under growing internal strain. He claimed the regime was crumbling, rattled and fracturing badly, as shown by the increasing amount of intelligence pouring from Baghdad.

He also bluntly warned that an attempted attack on Britain by terrorists was inevitable, despite the arrest of 3,000 terrorists worldwide since September 11, and he tried to underline the scale of the new threat facing the modern world.

He said: “Do we really doubt that if these terrorists could get hold of these weapons of mass destruction that they would not use them? The most frightening thing is the coming together of fanaticism and the technology capable of delivering mass destruction and mass death.” —Dawn/The Guardian News Service