Content of Bush's speech from Bloomberg
Bush Urges United Nations to Force Iraq to Disarm (Update2)
(Adds new quote from speech in third, seventh paragraphs.)
United Nations, New York, Sept. 12 (Bloomberg) -- The United
Nations must force Saddam Hussein to rid his country of any
weapons of mass destruction and ``hold Iraq to account'' for its
defiance, President George W. Bush told the UN General Assembly.
Iraq has ``unilaterally subverted'' all UN resolutions
mandating inspections for biological, chemical and nuclear
weapons, Bush said. Hussein's further failure to comply means
``action is unavoidable,'' he said.
``The conduct of the Iraqi regime is a threat to the
authority of the United Nations and a threat to peace,'' Bush said
during his 26-minute speech. ``Will the United Nations serve the
purpose of its founding or will it be irrelevant.''
Bush didn't specify what consequences a new UN resolution
should threaten or set a deadline for fresh inspections. Secretary
of State Colin Powell will meet tomorrow with the four other
permanent members of the UN Security Council to draft a
resolution, U.S. officials said.
Bush's doctrine of pre-emptive strikes to avoid potential
threats has won wide backing for fights against terrorists
responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. U.S. allies in Europe and
the Middle East have been reluctant to apply it to Iraq without
the UN's blessing.
Bush said the U.S. wishes to work with the UN. He also made
clear that the U.S. is prepared to act alone if necessary.
``We will work with the UN Security Council for the necessary
resolutions, but the purposes of the United States should not be
doubted,'' Bush said. ``The just demands of peace and security
will be met, or action will be unavoidable.''
UN Authorization
The U.S. government would ``like to get the UN to authorize
the use of force, if necessary'' or at least not get in the way of
U.S. military action, said Harlan Ullman, an analyst at the Center
for Strategic and International Studies. ``That's the minimum
fallback position.''
Just before Bush spoke, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged
that any action toward Iraq be ``multilateral.''
Annan cited Iraq's history of defying UN resolutions and
urged it to allow weapons inspections to resume. He didn't mention
the U.S. by name, even as he said ``the most powerful countries
know that they need to work with others, in multilateral
institutions, to achieve their aims.''
``I believe that every government that is committed to the
rule of law at home must also be committed to the rule of law
abroad,'' Annan told delegates as the UN opened two weeks of
general debate.
Regime Without Legitimacy
Bush said Hussein's failure to comply would mean ``a regime
that has lost its legitimacy will lose its power.''
``If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will immediately and
unconditionally forswear, disclose, and remove or destroy all
weapons of mass destruction, long-range missiles, and all related
material,'' he said.
The prospect of a U.S.-led war has helped drive up crude oil
prices 24 percent in the last three months. Iraq has the world's
second-largest reserves after Saudi Arabia. Any confrontation
might endanger shipping in the Persian Gulf, through which about
20 percent of the world's oil is carried.
Bush's speech, coming a day after the one-year anniversary of
the deadliest terror attacks on U.S. soil, will kick off a round
of high-level talks aimed at quickly drafting a UN resolution, two
senior administration officials told a reporters' briefing.
Terrorist Threat
The president said terrorists are plotting more destruction
and they will endanger all nations of the world if they acquire
chemical, biological or even nuclear devices.
``Our greatest fear is that terrorists will find a shortcut
to their mad ambitions when an outlaw regim supplies them with the
technologies to kill on a massive scale,'' he said.
On Iraq, the administration officials said the U.S. will work
to get a resolution acceptable to the Security Council as soon as
possible, perhaps within the next several weeks.
Powell will meet tomorrow with representatives from China,
Russia, Great Britain and France, the officials said.
Those four countries, along with the U.S., make up the five
permanent members of the UN Security Council. Each permanent
Security Council member can veto any resolution authorizing action
against another nation, and Russia has already threatened to use
that power to quash any Iraq resolution.
Deadline to be Determined
The administration officials said Bush wants any new
resolution to have a deadline by which Hussein must comply, and
that the timing on the deadline would have to be worked out with
other Security Council members.
Bush said Hussein has violated 16 UN resolutions imposed
since the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
``The conduct of the Iraqi regime is a threat to the
authority of the UN and peace,'' Bush said. ``Iraq has answered a
decade of resolutions with a decade of defiance.''
Bush prodded the UN to enforce its resolutions that require
Hussein to submit to weapons inspectors, to disarm, and to cease
oppressing Iraq's Kurdish minority.
``We created a United Nations Security Council, so that
unlike the League of Nations, our deliberations would be more than
talk, our resolutions more than wishes,'' Bush said.
The senior administration officials said that U.S. officials,
particularly Powell, want any new resolution to catalogue
Hussein's defiance of past UN resolutions, with an emphasis on the
violations that pose the greatest danger to the world,
particularly his weapons programs.
The administration officials said Powell reached
understandings in recent conversations with other Security Council
members that Hussein has made progress recent months in his
efforts to obtain and stockpile weapons of mass destruction. They
declined to produce details.
Bush officials said they were heartened that Annan said in
his UN speech that Iraq must comply with existing UN resolutions,
or else the Security Council would be forced to ``live up to its
responsibilities'' to act against rogue nations.
--Richard Keil and Holly Rosenkrantz in New York, through the
Washington newsroom (202) 251-4470 or dkeil@bloomberg.net Editors
Meszoly, Schmick, Sobczyk |
