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WASHINGTON, April 3: A grim US Defnece Secretary Donald Rumsfeld rejected on Thursday any effort by other countries to broker an end to the Iraq war by allowing President Saddam Hussein to leave the country.
“There’s not a chance that there is going to be a deal. It doesn’t matter who proposes it, there will not be one,” Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon as US troops pressed against southern Baghdad two weeks into an invasion to overthrow Saddam.
President George W. Bush and Rumsfeld said this week the only acceptable end to the conflict would be complete surrender. Rumsfeld and America’s top military officer stressed that point at Thursday’s Pentagon briefing.
The secretary told reporters again that Washington did not know if Saddam was alive or dead, but he quashed any idea that the United States was still urging Iraq’s president to leave the country peacefully as it did before hostilities began.
“If he’s able to get out of the country, he’s out of the country,” Mr Rumsfeld said in response to questions.
“If you’re asking are we still encouraging him to leave, the answer is no.”
Asked at a Pentagon briefing about reports that other countries such as France or Russia, both opposed to the war, might try to broker a deal for leaders in Baghdad to leave the country, Mr Rumsfeld said any such a move would be “unhelpful.”
NO WAY OUT:”For the senior leadership, there is no way out. Their fate has been sealed by their actions,” he said.
“The same is not true for the Iraqi armed forces. Iraqi officers and soldiers can still survive and help to rebuild a free Iraq if they do the right thing. They must now decide whether they want to share the fate of Saddam Hussein or will they save themselves, turn on that condemned dictator and help the forces of Iraq’s liberation.”
Mr Rumsfeld and Mr Myers called on Iraqi military officers to turn against the Saddam government and said US-led forces had taken 45 per cent of Iraqi territory.
Mr Rumsfeld also said the Iraqi armed forces were reinforcing battered Republican Guard divisions defending Baghdad with troops from the less-capable regular army.
“The Iraqi regime no longer controls about 45 per cent of Iraq and coalition forces are on the outskirts of Baghdad,” said Myers.
“Iraq is running out of real soldiers and soon all that will be left are war criminals,” said Mr Rumsfeld, again charging that civilian-clad para-military forces loyal to President Saddam were committing war crimes against Western troops and the Iraqi population.
After almost two weeks of heavy air attacks in which US-led forces have dropped more than 10,000 bombs and fired more than 700 cruise missiles at Iraq, the lights abruptly went out in Baghdad on Thursday night.
As Army troops from the 3rd Infantry Division and US Marines continued to battle battered Iraqi Republican Guard units on the southern outskirts of Baghdad, Myers said that US warplanes were apparently not responsible for the blackout.
“(The US) Central Command has not targeted the power grid in Baghdad,” the general said when asked why the lights went out.
General Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned that efforts to make a deal would only prolong the war and increase the likelihood of civilian casualties.
SYRIA ACCUSED: Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld accused Syria on Thursday of continuing to allow shipments of military equipment into Iraq in defiance of a US warning.
Mr Rumsfeld had said last Friday the United States had received information that shipments of “military supplies and material and equipment,” including night-vision goggles, had been entering Iraq from Syria. Syria has dismissed the allegations.
During a Pentagon briefing on Thursday, Mr Rumsfeld said: “We have seen that Syria is continuing to conduct itself the way it was prior to the time I said what I said.”
Mr Rumsfeld did not state specifically the nature of the alleged continuing shipments nor did he say what actions, if any, the United States would take.
Mr Rumsfeld previously said the shipments were hostile acts that threatened the lives of US forces in Iraq, adding that the United States would hold the Syrian government accountable for such shipments. Syria borders western Iraq.
On Thursday he also said the he did not know what Iran’s reaction was to his warning last week about the alleged presence inside Iraq of “hundreds” of armed Iraqi Shia soldiers trained and financed by Iranians.
“But I have not seen anything recently on the part of Iran that... is terribly disturbing,” Rumsfeld said.
He did not specify whether that meant there no longer were any such Badr Brigade forces operating inside Iraq.—Reuters
