-- Bush Slams Iraq's 'Deception' on Missiles --
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush said on Thursday any
Iraqi plan to destroy banned missiles was part of "a campaign
of deception" and he called for Baghdad to disarm completely.
"The discussion about these rockets is part of his campaign
of deception," Bush said. "See, he'll say, 'I'm not going to
destroy the rockets' and then he'll have a change of mind this
weekend and destroy the rockets and say, 'I've disarmed."'
U.N. arms inspectors say the al-Samoud 2 rockets violate
the 93-mile range limit imposed after the 1991 Gulf war and
called for Iraq to start destroying them by March 1.
"The rockets are just the tip of the iceberg. The only
question at hand is total, complete disarmament, which he is
refusing to do," Bush told reporters in the Oval Office.
Speaking after a meeting with Afghan President Hamid
Karzai, Bush himself raised the issue of the missiles, saying
he had noticed there had been "some talk about the illegal
rockets in Iraq."
An Iraqi official said Baghdad would respond within the
next two days to the U.N. order to destroy its al-Samoud
missiles but it was not immediately known what that response
would be.
Iraq had said previously that it was "seriously and
genuinely" studying the order chief weapons inspector Hans Blix
gave it last week to begin destroying, by Saturday, March 1,
dozens of the missiles in a key test of Iraq's willingness to
comply with U.N. disarmament demands.
Bush drew a distinction between the 1991 Gulf war ordered
by his father President George Bush to drive Iraqi troops out
of Kuwait saying, "The mission now is to disarm Saddam Hussein
in the name of peace, and we will disarm Saddam Hussein."
The elder Bush has been criticized for stopping the war too
early and leaving the Iraqi president in power.
"When you commit troops to war, you must have a clear
mission," the current president said. "Should we be forced to
commit our troops because of his failure to disarm, the mission
will be complete disarmament, which will mean regime change.
That was not the mission in 1991."
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27-Feb-2003 17:42:42 GMT
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