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Author
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Topic: Bush to give UN inspections a couple more weeks?
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Trafield
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posted
http://www.msnbc.com/news/864447.asp?0cv=KA01
WHEN HIS ARCHRIVAL, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, had raised the idea of taking on Saddam Hussein only days after 9-11, Powell rolled his eyes in exasperation, insisting Al Qaeda alone should be the focus. Last summer Powell warned President Bush in dire terms not to attack Iraq unilaterally, and prodded him to go to the United Nations. But last week, as Powell listened to Europeans boast about the success of the weapons inspectors in Iraq, his patience finally gave out. Sitting across a long rectangular table inside Manhattan’s Waldorf-Astoria hotel, the usually genial Powell issued a stark warning to his French counterpart: the clock has run out on Saddam and the United Nations. “Don’t underestimate the resolve of the United States to solve this problem without dragging it out,” he said. The dove had finally morphed into a hawk.
Powell has long been a reluctant warrior. The former four-star general and decorated Vietnam veteran once questioned the need to go to war to liberate Kuwait. Later he counseled against military interventions in the Balkans. Now he is telling America’s war-wary allies that there is no peaceful way to disarm Saddam Hussein. While the French argued that U.N. inspectors had “frozen” Iraq’s weapons programs, Powell was blunt and dismissive. “Inspections,” he told reporters categorically last week, “will not work.” One senior State Department official explains Powell’s change of heart as a gradual awakening: “People ask why Powell is becoming increasingly hard-line. It’s because every day, when we wake up in the morning, the facts are clear that Iraq has gone back to its old ways and is refusing to disarm, and trying to prevent the inspectors from disarming them. It’s a big decision, especially for a former general who knows what this is all about.”
A FINAL PUSH
Powell’s conversion is the surest sign that what once looked like a game of brinkmanship with Iraq is becoming a deadly serious preparation for war. George W. Bush always threatened to lead the world against Iraq—despite warnings that an unpopular, pre-emptive war could make America less safe by fueling anti-Americanism around the globe, and perhaps even by provoking Saddam to disperse his chemical and biological agents to terrorists. Now Bush says it’s time for the rest of the world to step onboard or step aside as the United States disarms Saddam by force. Administration officials tell NEWSWEEK their strategy is to give one last chance, not to Baghdad, but to the United Nations. That means a final diplomatic push—to win over world opinion—lasting weeks, not months.
This week Bush will spell out America’s duty to disarm Saddam in his State of the Union address, just one day after U.N. weapons inspectors issue their first full report on Iraq. That will weigh heavily over the key sessions at the United Nations. By the end of the week, Bush meets with British Prime Minister Tony Blair at Camp David to plan the final weeks before war. “February is the battleground,” says one senior British official, predicting intense public pressure as the war machine gets ready to roll. Of course, war could still be avoided by a surprise military coup in Baghdad. But nobody inside the Bush administration is banking on it. “We’re on the cusp of a big decision,” says one senior administration official.
© 2003 Newsweek, Inc.
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