Steve Quayle News Alerts

January 30, 2003
By Hassan Hafidh and Randall Mikkelsen

BAGHDAD/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - America's closest friends in Europe urged those opposed to invading Iraq to line up behind George W. Bush on Thursday, as the focus of diplomacy swung further toward preparing for war rather than averting it.

There are just weeks left for talking -- not months -- said a White House spokesman, suggesting that one of the few options open to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein now was to go into exile.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair and seven others including the leaders of Italy, Poland and Spain signed an open letter calling on the peace camp -- implicitly Germany, France and Russia -- to rally to the U.S. standard against Iraq.

"The transatlantic relationship must not become a casualty of the current Iraqi regime's attempts to threaten world security," they wrote in a letter printed in several newspapers.

There was no sign of a change of heart, however. Public opinion in France, Germany and elsewhere remains firmly opposed to an American-run war and Greece, the European Union president, slammed the letter for undermining efforts at EU unity.

At the center of an intense round of diplomacy, starting with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's meeting with Bush on Thursday and leading up to what may be a crunch meeting of the United Nations Security Council on February 14, will be U.S. efforts to convince the doubters it has evidence that Iraq has nuclear, biological or chemical weapons of mass destruction.

"The president is using this window now to engage in very busy and active diplomacy. This will take place in a period of weeks, not months," Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer said. Baghdad has dismissed previous suggestions Saddam might go into exile.

MANDELA SEES "HOLOCAUST"

In the Middle East, Syrian state media concluded that Bush's State of the Union address this week had been nothing short of a "declaration of war." In Baghdad, one newspaper dismissed it as a "Hollywood commotion." Saddam vowed to break America's neck.

Nelson Mandela, South Africa's former president and Nobel peace laureate, said the United States did not care for human beings and that Bush was plunging the world into a "holocaust."

High-level diplomacy was not restricted to Washington. Blair, who has sent much of Britain's forces to the Gulf, was to meet Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar in Madrid before flying on to Washington for talks on Friday at Camp David.

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal, who has warned that invasion could set off "calamitous" unrest in neighboring Iraq, was also expected for talks at the White House on Thursday.

Bush, who U.S. officials said may discuss setting Saddam a deadline, says he is willing to launch the big U.S. invasion force now massing in the Gulf without further U.N. backing.

But he is sending Secretary of State Colin Powell to the Security Council on Wednesday with more intelligence data in the hope of avoiding a bitter split with other big powers.

Since renewing inspections two months ago, U.N. experts have come up with little hard evidence of weapons banned by U.N. resolutions passed after the 1991 Gulf War. Chief nuclear inspector Mohamed ElBaradei renewed his calls on Thursday for several months more to conduct searches.

AL QAEDA LINK?

But U.S. officials have made clear they have other grounds for wanting rid of Saddam anyway -- Bush accused him of aiding Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda, the group Washington blames for the September 11 attacks. Military schedules and looming summer heat also lead many analysts to forecast that, barring surprises such as Saddam falling from power, war will begin within weeks.

"The Iraqis are on notice. They have probably till February 14 before a decision will have to be made about bringing them into conformity with their international obligations," Canadian Foreign Minister Bill Graham said. Canada has argued for giving inspections more time but seemed to be hardening its stance.

On February 14, Valentine's Day, ElBaradei and fellow inspector Hans Blix will report again to the Security Council. ElBaradei said his teams had yet to find a "gross violation."

An Iraqi opposition source said U.S. troops were already at work in Kurd-controlled northern Iraq, prompting the Pentagon to say there were no "significant forces" in the area "right now."

China, one of five permanent members of the Security Council with the power to veto any new resolution calling for an attack on Iraq, repeated its calls for a peaceful U.N. solution.

But many analysts argue that, like fellow permanent members France and Russia, Beijing may in the end prefer to go along with the unstoppable force of American arms rather than risk a rift with Washington for the sake of Baghdad's isolated leader.

Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Russia had no evidence of an Iraqi link to al Qaeda and called for more arms inspections. But Moscow also has a big commercial interest in an end to trade sanctions on Iraq that would follow Saddam's overthrow -- and little to gain from falling out with the remaining superpower.

Many Arabs and Muslims see war on Iraq as part of an American strategy to grab control of the world's second biggest oil reserves. Bush says he wants to bring democracy and remove a threat that Saddam poses both to his neighbors and to the wider world through helping "terrorists."

Iraq says an attack would backfire, by inflaming sentiment in the Muslim world against Americans. Baghdad's U.N. ambassador Mohammed Aldouri told Reuters: "United States interests will be endangered in the Arab world and the Muslim world."

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