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Mix-Ansicht- Bush:"The Game is over" - Das Spiel ist aus (mT+L) - Praxedis, 07.02.2003, 00:36
Bush:"The Game is over" - Das Spiel ist aus (mT+L)
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<h1>Bush Says 'Game Is Over' for Iraq and Urges U.N. to Act</h1>
By BRIAN KNOWLTON
International Herald Tribune
WASHINGTON, Feb. 6 - President Bush, in some of his strongest words on Iraq, warned the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein this afternoon that he ``will be stopped,'' and the president cautioned the United Nations Security Council that it must not back down when its demands for disarmament were ``defied and mocked by a dictator.''
``Saddam Hussein was given a final chance,'' Mr. Bush said, after a White House meeting with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. ``He's throwing that chance away.''
The president said the United States had no more patience with Iraq's ``empty concessions, transparently false denials.''
``The game is over,'' Mr. Bush said.
In a sign that Washington will soon be ready to act against Iraq, the 101st Airborne Division received orders today to deploy to the Persian Gulf, meaning the Army's largest helicopter-assault division - some 270 combat and support helicopters - will now be part of the buildup for a war with Iraq. The deployment of some 23,000 troops is much larger than what Pentagon officials had described as late as a week ago.
As he stepped up even further the American tone of confrontation with Iraq, Mr. Bush reiterated many of the charges leveled by Mr. Powell before the Security Council on Wednesday.
Iraq, Mr. Bush said, had secretly moved or failed to account for thousands of banned biological and chemical weapons. It then had concealed them, he said, in a program of deception that was ``directed from highest levels of the Iraqi regime, including Saddam Hussein, his son, the vice president and the very official responsible for cooperating with the inspectors.''
While a number of countries still want to give United Nations inspectors more time to search for illegal weapons in Iraq, Mr. Bush said Baghdad presented a real and urgent threat that needed to be addressed now.
The president warned that unmanned Iraqi drones launched from a ship off the American coast could carry biological or chemical weapons to targets hundreds of miles inland.
Mr. Bush said it was now time for the Security Council to give force to its earlier resolutions demanding Iraqi disarmament. In his most direct comment on the matter, he said the United States would welcome a new Security Council resolution on Iraq, but only one that ``makes clear that the Security Council stands behind its previous demands.''
``Resolutions mean little without resolve,'' he said, ``and the United States, along with a growing coalition of nations, is resolved to take whatever action is necessary to defend ourselves and disarm the Iraqi regime.''
``Saddam Hussein will be stopped,'' he said. The president then left the room, without taking questions.
Mr. Bush's strong comments came hours after a top United Nations weapons inspector exhorted Iraq to show ``drastic change'' in cooperating to disarm or be prepared for grave problems.
But several important countries continued to hold out Thursday for further weapons inspections, and not war.
The call by the inspector, Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, came amid signs of a possible wavering in France's outspoken opposition to military action against Iraq. After the closely watched report by Mr. Powell at the United Nations, France urged an early deadline of Feb. 14 for Iraq to provide urgently sought answers to arms monitors, and declined to rule out military force.
But Russia indicated today that the Powell presentation had not affected its support for continued inspections, and French officials said that they agreed. The comments followed a phone conversation between President Vladimir V. Putin and President Jacques Chirac.
China expressed a similar view.
Mr. Powell had told a Senate hearing earlier today that Mr. Bush would welcome a second resolution and that ``many members of the Council would not only welcome it, some of them would say we require one for participation in whatever might come.''
Mr. Powell said, as well, that within weeks the Iraqi situation would be brought to a conclusion ``one way or another.''
Iraq said that it would send the United Nations a detailed letter refuting Washington's allegations that Baghdad had actively moved to displace and conceal banned weapons of mass destruction.
Other developments increased the sense that war might be growing closer: the Turkish Parliament voted to allow the United States to renovate military bases for a possible invasion of northern Iraq; the NATO secretary-general predicted a favorable response to American requests for Iraq-related assistance; and Britain said it would increase its air force presence in the Gulf to about 100 aircraft, a level similar to that deployed in the 1991 war there.
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Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, said that diplomatic efforts would continue.
But Mr. Powell, whom many critics of a possible war had looked to to defend that position within the Bush administration, indicated today that he saw dwindling prospects for diplomacy.
``I don't like war,'' he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. ``Nobody likes war. The president doesn't like war, doesn't want a war. But this is a problem we cannot walk away from.''
President Putin and President Chirac agreed during a telephone call today that the Iraqi crisis should be solved without force, Agence France-Presse reported from Moscow. ``The positions of Russia and France correspond, and stand in favor of solving the Iraqi problem through political-diplomatic means,'' the Kremlin said in a statement.
Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said that Mr. Powell's evidence against Iraq had placed the burden squarely on Baghdad. But he insisted that inspections should continue and added that ``one or several'' more United Nations resolutions might be required before the Security Council would authorize force.
He again left open a door, nonetheless, for a Russian turn-about. No final decision should be made, he said, until all the freshly offered American intelligence had been thoroughly analyzed.
In another sign of shifting sensibilities, reporters at a regular White House briefing raised several questions about how a postwar Iraq would be administered. Mr. Fleischer answered rather than deflecting them as premature.
The plan is for a government to emerge ``both from inside and outside Iraq,'' he said, apparently alluding to a possible role for exile groups. He said that administration would be handled by ``a number of agencies, including international.'' All this would happen under an umbrella of United States military protection.
And Mr. Fleischer added that in the aftermath of any war, humanitarian relief to Iraq would be a priority for the United States.
With events gaining pace, Mr. ElBaradei and the chief United Nations weapons inspector, Hans Blix, met in London with Prime Minister Tony Blair, then headed for a weekend of meetings in Baghdad that they - and Mr. Powell, too - have described as crucial.
Both inspectors said that Iraq must drastically improve cooperation if it is to avert war.
``The message coming from the Security Council is very clear: that Iraq is not cooperating fully, that they need to show drastic change in terms of cooperation,'' Mr. ElBaradei said. If Baghdad's response is not dramatically positive, Mr. Blix said, ``then our report next Friday will not be what we would like it to be.''
``Time is very critical,'' Mr. ElBaradei continued. ``We need to show progress.''
Mr. Blair has suggested that Feb. 14 - the date when the weapons inspectors are to make their next report to the Security Council - could be a deadline for deciding on war; American officials have hinted at a similar timetable.
Belgium called today for an emergency meeting of the European Union, 13 of its candidate states, and Iraq's neighbors to discuss the crisis after that date.
The crisis has severely divided Europe, with a growing list of countries lining up in support of the United States and Britain, but two of Europe's historical powers, France and Germany, standing in opposition to war.
But Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, dismissed French calls, made after Mr. Powell's speech, for bolstering weapons inspections. What was needed, he said, was not more inspectors, but ``more, much, much more cooperation from the Iraqi regime.''
The United States and Britain have said that Iraq already is in ``material breach'' of United Nations resolutions, justifying its forcible disarmament unless Baghdad becomes much more forthcoming immediately.
In Brussels, the North Atlantic Council, NATO's executive group, again deferred a decision on a United States request for military assistance, mainly to defend Turkey in event of war. But the alliance's secretary-general, Lord George Robertson, said that unless any member objected formally by Monday, the military aid would be authorized automatically.
France, Germany and Belgium, which had resisted the request as premature, appeared unlikely to take the step of formally opposing the request by NATO's most powerful and influential member.
The planned measures would include the deployment of AWACS surveillance planes, Patriot anti-missile systems, in-air refueling planes and NATO's anti-chemical, biological and nuclear weapons center.
Mr. Powell said earlier on CBS-TV that only a substantive change in policy by Mr. Hussein could now avert war, ``not just another way to play cat-and-mouse with the inspectors.''
``So, in my judgment,'' he added, ``it will not be enough for him to simply say, 'Okay, I'll now start to allow the U-2 flights' '' that inspectors want in support of their ground efforts.
``He needs to come clean.''
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<ul> ~ NY Times</ul>
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