September 21, 2003	Sunday	Rajab 23, 1424

WASHINGTON, Sept 20: US President George Bush will issue a “call to action” to UN member states to help out with reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan when he addresses the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, senior Bush administration officials said on Saturday.

The move comes a year after Mr Bush challenged the United Nations to back its anti-Iraq resolutions with the threat of force or risk becoming irrelevant, opening an ultimately doomed bid for a UN-backed resolution authorizing an invasion of Iraq.

With US military forces in Iraq under daily guerrilla attack, the costs of the US effort swelling the budget deficit, and no conclusive evidence of weapons of mass destruction discovered, President Bush goes before the UN General Assembly this year looking to put the bitter pre-war debate behind him and seek international assistance.

He faces increasing criticism at home about Iraq, particularly from Democratic presidential candidates, and his popularity has eroded since a Sept 7 speech in which he told Americans it will cost 87 billion dollars to pay for the US military deployment in Iraq and reconstruction over the next year.

Mr Bush will lump his appeal for assistance for Iraq and Afghanistan together with efforts to combat the spread of weapons of mass destruction, fight AIDS as well as the trafficking in human beings.

“It really is an opportunity to say to the international community: We have real challenges, we can’t ignore them, we have to meet them. It’s a call to action,” said one official.—Reuters