LONDON, Nov 2: Britain’s role in a US-led invasion of Iraq came under the media spotlight on Saturday, with the Daily Telegraph reporting that finance ministry officials had ruled that the government could not afford hawkish Prime Minister Tony Blair’s threat to take part in US-led military action.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown ordered military planners to come up with new strategies after it was worked out that the contribution to an attack would cost three billion pounds, the London-based newspaper said.
“Defence chiefs are furious over the suggestion that they might have to cut the force numbers they believe they need to fight a war in order to fit into a Treasury-imposed straitjacket,” said the front-page article.
“The Treasury said we can’t afford it,” a senior defence source told the right-wing daily which has been a supporter of Blair’s tough line on Iraq, but is no friend of his ruling Labour Party.
“Well that will look great for Tony Blair,” the only allied leader who has actually been asked to send forces, the source added.
Military planners put the cost of a British contribution to an operation that lasts more than a year and involves a post-war occupation force as high as 15 billion pounds, according to the daily.
Half of the Treasury’s figure was for the cost of deploying an armored division to Kuwait to oppose Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s elite Republican Guard.
POWELL: The United States pressed ahead with its military build-up in the Gulf as Secretary of State Colin Powell stepped up lobbying efforts to get a strongly worded motion against Iraq through the UN Security Council.
However, the White House on Saturday sought to downplay Secretary of State Colin Powell’s optimism about quick passage of a UN disarmament resolution on Iraq.
“I don’t think he was that precise in his language,” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters accompanying President George W. Bush on a campaign trip here.
On Wednesday, Powell had said the resolution could be passed “toward the end of next week” and that we would be “surprised if it was the following week.”
“He indicated it could be this coming week, it could be the week after,” said Fleischer.
“I think he left the door open. Again it’s impossible to guess, I just don’t want to guess the date.”
He added that Bush “would like to see this wrapped up soon.”
AIRCRAFT CARRIER: The aircraft carrier USS Constellation was due to leave its home base of San Diego, California, at the head of a six ship carrier group, US navy spokesman Ensign Mike Morley said.
The departure of the Constellation — with its 75 planes and 5,500 sailors, marines and pilots — on a six-month mission was brought forward from early next year.
The USS Abraham Lincoln carrier group is already in the Gulf, and Morley said “there will a period where both of them are deployed simultaneously.” Another US carrier group is in the Mediterranean.
The US navy has awarded a stream of contracts to take armor, ammunition and other military equipment to the region ahead of any military intervention in Iraq.
Alongside US efforts to secure United Nations action to disarm Iraq, President George W. Bush has emphasized that he is ready to take unilateral action against Saddam, whom he accuses of developing weapons of mass destruction.
But US officials said they expect a Security Council vote on Iraq by the end of next week amid signs that an agreement is near with Washington’s leading critics France and Russia.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw telephoned his Russian counterpart Igor Ivanov on Saturday in a fresh bid to ease Moscow’s misgivings about an immediate threat of force.
Ivanov “stressed the need for the resumption of weapons inspections as soon as possible”, the Russian foreign ministry said.—AFP