Bush urges U.N., Congress to move fast on Iraq
By JAMES KUHNHENN and DIEGO IBARGUEN
Knight Ridder Newspapers
URL: bayarea.com
NEW YORK - With diplomacy and a touch of ridicule, President Bush on Friday pressed the United Nations and Congress to act on resolutions authorizing action against Iraq "as quickly as possible."
Diplomats from key U.N. powers and leading members of Congress from both major parties said Bush's appeal for action appeared to be working. Both the U.N. and Congress are moving toward endorsing at least limited action on Iraq soon.
The president said Friday that he doubted Saddam Hussein would agree to disarm or would wait passively to see what happened next.
Iraq's deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, confirmed Bush's doubts, rejecting the unconditional return of weapons inspections. "We have had a bad experience with them," Aziz told the Arab satellite station MBC.
Bush urged the United Nations Security Council to move fast - "in days and weeks" - to demand that Saddam permit unfettered U.N. searches for weapons of mass destruction. He chided Democrats in Congress who said they would rather not vote on Iraq until after the U.N. acted or after November's elections.
"Democrats waiting for the U.N. to act? I can't imagine an elected United States - elected member of the United States Senate or House of Representatives saying, `I think I'm going to wait for the United Nations to make a decision,'" Bush said.
Democratic lawmakers on Friday tried to shift the debate away from when to vote on an Iraq resolution to what such a resolution might say. Several leading Democratic senators voiced support for a resolution that would press the U.N. to act quickly but would stop short of threatening unilateral U.S. military action against Iraq.
On the international front, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Friday that Saddam's regime faced "consequences" if it failed to comply with U.N. Security Council resolutions. China's official news agency said the country's foreign minister, Tang Jiaxuan, urged Iraq to abide by the security council measures "in an earnest manner," but maintained that action involving Iraq should be through the United Nations.
A senior Bush administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said four or five foreign delegations to the U.N. in private meetings expressed delight with the president's speech Thursday to the General Assembly, including one Arab delegation.
Friday's developments signaled crucial repositioning at home and abroad in the wake of Bush's speech Thursday. Many lawmakers and foreign leaders had reacted with alarm to the administration's threats against Iraq last month. But Bush's effort this week to engage the U.N., though stern in tone, appeared to be achieving its desired effect.
"In case Iraq refuses to cooperate with the U.N. Security Council, the Iraqi leadership will bear responsibility for possible consequences," Ivanov said Friday before an unofficial meeting of the five permanent members of the Security Council. Russia is considered a linchpin in the Security Council, where any one of the five permanent members can veto a resolution. The five members are the United States, Great Britain, France, Russia and China.
Secretary of State Colin Powell met Friday with security council members, Europeans, and delegations from Japan and key Persian Gulf and former Soviet Union states, though no decisions were announced.
"I think all the members of the council are now seized with the issue, recognize the challenge that Iraq does present to international law and to the mandate of the Security Council," Powell said at a news conference.
Earlier, in an interview on ABC, Powell said the Security Council members would concentrate on how to make Iraq obey U.N. resolutions.
"They've got to have deadlines to them," Powell said. "And there has to be action required as a result of noncompliance."
Senior administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the U.N. resolution would consist of three parts: a description of Saddam's failures to comply with U.N. resolutions, a detailed list of actions Saddam must undertake within specific deadlines and a specific consequence if Saddam ignores the demands.
A Western diplomat at the United Nations, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said the first draft of a resolution wouldn't be circulated among U.N. Security Council members until at least the week after next.
"The real pen-to-paper work won't really start until ministers return to their capitals, consult their governments and send instructions back here" to their U.N. delegations," the diplomat said.
It is most likely, said the diplomat, that Britain, the only major power solidly behind Bush, will take the lead in drafting the resolution.
In Washington, the chairman of the military's Joint Chiefs of Staff emphasized the difficulty that weapons inspectors would face in Iraq. Gen. Richard Myers said the United States had evidence that mobile laboratories in Iraq had the ability to manufacture chemical and biological weapons.
"The fact that you can put it on wheels makes it a lot easier to hide from people that might be looking for it," he said in a speech to the National Press Club.
Bush reserved his toughest admonition for congressional Democrats. Several lawmakers had said Thursday that they worried about endorsing the use of force against Iraq before the U.N. acts.
"If I were running for office, I'm not sure how I'd explain to the American people - say, `Vote for me, and, oh, by the way, on a matter of national security, I think I'm going to wait for somebody else to act,'" Bush said.
His comments signaled a willingness to make Iraq, which has yet to emerge as an issue in this fall's political campaigns, a partisan point over the next eight weeks.
Several Democrats appeared to concede that Bush would win some form of resolution before Congress adjourns early next month, but the language of the resolution probably will take weeks to jell. Republicans, led by Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi and Sen. John McCain of Arizona, want Congress to give Bush full authority to use force against Iraq if necessary. Democrats want a more calibrated measure.
"What we need to do is build a global coalition against Saddam Hussein. If (Bush) wants a resolution supporting his speech yesterday, that would be easy to pass," said Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill. "If he wants an open-ended opportunity to go to war, that's a lot harder to pass."
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he was working on the wording of a resolution that would call on the U.N. to act by a specific date.
"We ought to speak with one voice urging the U.N.," he said. "It's much more effective, and avoids many of the risks that unilateral action without U.N. authority would entail."
Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said: "This is very serious business. We should slow it down a bit."
Republicans hewed to the president's view that U.S. action should not be conditioned on what the U.N. does.
"Should the U.N. ever have a veto on the ability of any president of the United States to use force when he is of the view that it would affect security interests? The answer to that is flatly no," said Sen. John Warner of Virginia, the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee.
Complicating matters for Democrats is a bipartisan 1998 resolution that urged then-President Clinton to "take appropriate action ... to bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations."
Republicans have assembled a packet of information highlighting Democratic support for that resolution, including a floor statement by Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota declaring: "Saddam Hussein must understand that the United States has the resolve to reverse that threat by force, if force is required. And, I must say, it has the will."
Bush derided the notion of waiting, saying, "I don't imagine Saddam Hussein sitting around saying, `Gosh, I think I'm going to wait for some resolution.'
"He's a threat, and we must deal with it as quickly as possible."
(Knight Ridder Newspapers correspondents Jonathan S. Landay, Mark McDonald and Daniel Rubin contributed to this report.) |
