WASHINGTON, Jan 21: US President George Bush said on Tuesday he had concluded Iraq was not disarming as required by the United Nations, and one of his top diplomats warned alternatives to war were nearly exhausted.
In a last-ditch diplomatic effort to avoid an invasion, Turkey announced it would host a meeting on Thursday of foreign ministers from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, Jordan and Syria.
In London, a retired air marshal said the latest deployments of ships and troops by the United States and the United Kingdom meant war on Iraq was now a question of when, not if, and that action was likely within weeks
Speaking to reporters after meeting a group of economists in Washington, President Bush vowed that if necessary, he would lead a coalition of nations in military action against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein despite opposition from France and other UN Security Council members.
“It’s clear to me now that he is not disarming. And surely our friends have learned lessons from the past,” Bush said, underscoring US frustration with nations who want to give UN weapons inspectors more time.
Echoing warnings from Bush that cast doubt on the inspections process and Iraqi promises to provide more cooperation, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said alternatives to the use of force had “just about exhausted at this point”.
Bush said the process of Iraqi “hide-and-seek” with inspectors was reminiscent of Saddam’s “evasions” in the 1990s. “This looks like a rerun of a bad movie, and I’m not interested in watching it,” Bush said.
“He has been told to disarm for 11 long years. He is not disarming. This business about more time, how much time do we need to see clearly that he is not disarming?”
Asked how much time he would give Saddam to comply with UN demands to disarm or face possible military action, Bush said: “I will let you know when the moment has come.”
France told the United States on Monday it would not support an attack on Iraq in the coming weeks, a position diplomats said was shared by most of the UN Security Council members.
France’s opposition came as the United States continued mounting a massive military presence in the Gulf, expected to be ready for combat next month.
The Pentagon has ordered two more US aircraft carriers and another 37,000 combat troops to deploy to the Gulf region for a possible invasion, defence officials said on Tuesday.
The United States has been putting renewed emphasis on next week’s report on Iraqi cooperation to be outlined by chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix.
US officials said the report would mark the start of a final phase in determining whether Iraq had fully complied with UN resolutions.
“It’s an important reporting date,” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said, adding the president had not “called it a trigger for war”.
But Bush said “time is running out” for Iraq and made clear the United States would act on its own, with its allies, if necessary.
“I believe in the name of peace he must disarm. And we will lead a coalition of willing nations to disarm him. Make no mistake about that. He will be disarmed,” Bush declared.
In a speech at the Institute of Peace dealing with what the White House called “the deceptive ways of Iraq”, Armitage stepped up rhetorical pressure.
“This regime has very little time left to undo the legacy of 12 years,” he said. “There is no sign, there is not one sign that the regime has any intent to comply fully with the terms of (UN) resolution 1441, just as it has failed to comply with any of the other 16 UN Security Council resolutions.”
To buttress Washington’s case, Armitage issued a 32-page document outlining “the apparatus of lies” engineered by Iraq.
Last week UN inspectors in Iraq said they found empty rocket warheads designed to carry chemical warfare agents.
“But finding these 16 warheads just raises a basic question: Where are the other 29,984? Because that’s how many empty chemical warheads the UN Special Commission estimated he had, and he’s never accounted for,” Armitage said.
“And where are the 550 artillery shells that are filled with mustard gas, and the 400 biological weapons — capable, aerial bombs — and the 26,000 litres of anthrax — the botulinum, the VX, the sarin gas that the UN says he has? We don’t know, because Saddam Hussein has never accounted for any of it,” Armitage added.
OPPOSITION PLAYED DOWN: US administration officials played down opposition to military action from France and other Security Council members, saying the UN’s credibility was on the line.
“This remains an ongoing test of the will of nations, of the United Nations, to see if indeed it is a body that can keep the peace given the threat that Saddam Hussein poses to peace,” Fleischer said.
But he said Bush recognized he must keep working to “put the spine into the United Nations and the rest of the international community” so that the world did not slide back to the pattern of the 1990s in allowing Saddam to build up weapons.
The French position suggested they themselves acknowledged Iraq was lying about not having weapons of mass destruction, Fleischer said.
“So therefore the world has to ask the question: What do you do about it given the fact that even the French say Iraq is lying?” he asked.—Reuters\AFP