>>Powell Says U.S. Has 45-Nation Coalition on Iraq
Tue March 18, 2003 01:13 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Tuesday there was a coalition of about 45 nations that support taking military action against Iraq, one third of which prefer not to be named.
"We now have a coalition of the willing that includes some 30 nations who have publicly said they could be included in such a listing," Powell told reporters. "There are 15 other nations who for one reason or another do not yet wish to be publicly named but will be supporting the coalition."
President Bush gave an ultimatum to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein on Monday: leave power in 48 hours or face a U.S.-led war that will start "at a time of our choosing" to force Iraq to give up its suspected weapons of mass destruction. Iraq denies it has such weapons.
U.S. officials released a list of the nations they said would be part of the coalition including: Afghanistan, Albania, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Hungary, Italy and Japan, which it listed as "post-conflict."
The others were South Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom and Uzbekistan.<<
reuters.com
Notice that there are no Muslim countries on the list of those, which tells me that the 15 who don't want to be named at the moment include the Muslim countries we already know are backing us, which means, at a minimum, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, and Pakistan, and probably Yemen. My guess is that Iran is also on that list, but that's just a guess. Not sure whether the US will ever come right out and admit that one of the "Axis of Evil" countries is helping against one of the others, but eventually all things come out in the wash.
And, Ireland, one of the "neutrals", is letting us use their airports for refueling. |
