HEADLINE: Iraq says war a certainty as US pours troops into Gulf
Agence France Presse
December 21, 2002 Saturday 4:24 AM Eastern Time
SECTION: International News
BYLINE: MAHER CHMAYTELLI
DATELINE: BAGHDAD, Dec 21
BODY: The United States is forging ahead with massive war plans and Baghdad charged Saturday that Washington will declare war whatever it does, although Russia insisted Iraq has not broken the UN arms resolution.
News that more than 110,000 US troops will be deployed in the Gulf region by the end of January did nothing to calm fears in Iraq that conflict is coming.
The US contention that Iraq is in material breach of UN disarmament Resolution 1441 is all part of a premeditated plan to wage war, an official Baghdad newspaper said.
"The game that the United States is playing with Iraq, with the UN Security Council, with the UNMOVIC and IAEA (weapons inspectors) is a preconceived game with a clear target: to invade Iraq militarily," said Al-Iraq. US Secretary of State Colin "Powell's statement on doubts and suspicions concerning the Iraqi declaration" that it has no weapons of mass destruction "and all the other statements is part of this game," the newspaper said.
"The United States wants to drive us and the world into a dead end in the hope of getting the Security Council to issue a new resolution authorising it to wage war, or of provoking a split inside the council that offers the opportunity to go ahead with its aggressive plan unilaterally."
The influential Babel newspaper, run by President Saddam Hussein's elder son, Uday, said "Iraq has a choice between aggression or aggression."
The United States announced Friday it was virtually doubling its military strength in the Gulf as President George W. Bush said Iraq's weapons declaration was "not encouraging" for those seeking to avoid conflict.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair also urged troops to be ready for war as world powers braced for weeks and possibly months of wrangling at the United Nations over the best way to disarm Iraq.
The close allies have declared Iraq in "material breach" of its United Nations obligations because of omissions in its December 7 weapons declaration.
Another 50,000 US troops and additional military equipment will be sent to the Gulf by early January, a US defence official said. There are now about 65,000 US military personnel in the region, including 15,000 in Kuwait on the border with Iraq.
The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff inspected troops stationed in Qatar on Friday as part of the buildup he said was aimed at forcing Iraq to disarm.
It aimed to bolster "the diplomatic angle", General Richard Myers said, and make sure the Iraqi regime "understands the options that it has, that it is fairly up to them how we go," he said.
The deployment will include tens of thousands of reservists and give Bush the option to start combat operations against Iraq in late January or early February, said the official.
Bush, who on Friday postponed a planned trip to Africa from January 10 to 17, said Iraq has failed "those who long for peace" with its arms report.
"We're serious about keeping the peace, we're serious about working with our friends in the United Nations" to disarm Iraq, said Bush.
Thursday "was a disappointing day for those who long for peace," said the US president, who has vowed to lead a coalition to end Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programmes.
Britain also appeared to be moving closer to a conflict that Foreign Secretary Jack Straw insisted Thursday is not yet inevitable.
The Times newspaper said Britain would seek UN approval for war on Iraq in a second resolution at the end of January if arms inspections showed Saddam was in breach of UN Security Council Resolution 1441.
Russia, however, does not consider that Iraq has breached the resolution, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said in Washington.
The inspectors' report "is very comprehensive, but it does not contain alarming definitions that could be interpreted as a violation of the UN Security Council resolution by that country," Ivanov said.
China's Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan, whose country is one of the five permanent Security Council members with veto power -- along with Britain, France, Russia and the United States -- urged the international community not to make any hasty decisions.
"At the present time there is no need to hastily pass verdict on the Iraqi report," he said.
UN arms experts, who have vowed to keep out of the war of words between Baghdad and Washington, probed at least five sites in Iraq on Saturday.
The experts, who resumed work on November 27, today number 115 and have inspected some 90 sites.
The New York Times reported Saturday that Washington will shortly give UN inspectors new intelligence, gathered chiefly by spy satellites, that may lead them to Iraqi chemical and biological stockpiles.
Chief weapons inspector Han Blix has diplomatically but forcefully said he cannot improve his inspections without specific intelligence from Washington. |
