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WASHINGTON, March 15: US President George Bush said on Saturday he saw little hope Iraq would disarm peacefully, bracing the American people for war ahead of an emergency summit with allies Britain and Spain.
President Bush will travel to Portugal’s wind-swept Azores islands, 1,450 km west of the European mainland, on Sunday to meet British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar for what the White House portrayed as a final diplomatic push for a UN resolution demanding that Iraq disarm or face attack.
In preparation for the summit, Mr Bush called Mr Blair and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, telling Berlusconi he was “going the extra mile on the diplomatic front,” said Jeanie Mamo, a White House spokeswoman.
Barring a last-minute compromise in the UN Security Council, which seems increasingly unlikely, the White House would quickly shift to a war footing.
Once diplomacy is exhausted, administration officials say Mr Bush would address the nation, issuing what amounts to a final ultimatum to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and giving humanitarian aid workers and others time to leave the country before military action is taken.
“There is little reason to hope that Saddam Hussein will disarm,” Mr Bush said in his weekly radio address. “If force is required to disarm him, the American people can know that our armed forces have been given every tool and every resource to achieve victory.”
More US warships were en route to the Gulf region, where 250,000 troops are already ready to strike at Saddam over his alleged weapons of mass destruction.
Mr Bush spent Saturday at the Camp David presidential retreat, far from the thousands of anti-war protesters who planned to surround the White House.
Aides said Bush has signed off on plans for an “Iraqi Interim Authority” that could quickly take over certain government functions if Saddam is removed from power.
The transitional authority would include Iraqis from each of the country’s major ethnic, tribal and religious groups, and would eventually help draft a new Iraqi constitution setting up an autonomous government.
Bush, Blair and Aznar are the sponsors of a UN resolution that would set the stage for war on Iraq.
The measure is the subject of a bitter fight among members of the UN Security Council and appears doomed to fail due to French and Russian veto threats.
US officials said the summit, to be held at a US air base at Lajes on the island of Terceira, should not be considered a war council, but rather an effort to find unity on the Security Council in hopes of forcing Saddam to give up power without war.
“Crucial days lie ahead for the free nations of the world,” Mr Bush said. “Governments are now showing whether their stated commitments to liberty and security are words alone — or convictions they’re prepared to act upon.”
“And for the government of the United States and the coalition we lead, there is no doubt: we will confront a growing danger, to protect ourselves, to remove a patron and protector of terror, and to keep the peace of the world,” Mr Bush said.
UN COVER: The United States has said it might abandon efforts to get a UN vote altogether. It says November’s UN Resolution 1441 is mandate enough to invade Iraq.
But Mr Blair, facing his greatest political crisis over Iraq, is anxious for UN cover to assuage British public opinion, which is opposed to any military action without UN approval.
US officials said France, in vowing to veto the resolution, undercut efforts to increase pressure on Saddam to disarm peacefully.
“Sunday is not just to renegotiate the UN resolution with ourselves or anybody else,” a senior US official said.
“Sunday is to pick up from the dissipation of pressure that has been caused by the French — the threat to veto anything, all the proposals for God knows long — and to put some pressure back on Mr Saddam.”
The official, who asked not to be named, said the idea was to impress upon Saddam that there is “the nucleus of a coalition that is going to bring diplomacy to a close either way and to make him understand how serious this is.”
INSPECTORS INVITED: Iraq has invited chief UN weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei to visit Baghdad “as quickly as possible” to examine outstanding disarmament questions, Iraqi officials said on Saturday.
The invitation was extended in a letter from Gen Amer al-Saadi, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s senior scientific advisor, a foreign ministry spokesman said.
The aim of the visit, according to Mr Saadi, who was cited by the spokesman, is to “examine ways to accelerate cooperation between Iraq and the two organizations in all areas, notably in verifying questions which Mr Blix and Mr ElBaradei consider still outstanding.”—Reuters/AFP
