Diplomats Leave Iraq as Bush, Blair Make Case for War

February 4, 2003

Foreign diplomats in Iraq are leaving the country as the United States and Britain on Monday made a final push to rally world support for a war that could start within weeks.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in a statement to parliament, accused Iraq of consistently flouting its UN obligations.

"We are entering the final phase of a 12-year history of disarmament of Iraq," he said.

He urged a new UN resolution to pave the way for a US-led invasion while telling lawmakers it was "unmistakeable" that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was withholding cooperation from UN weapons inspectors.

Russian President Vladimir Putin meanwhile said the responsibility for the next stage of the escalating crisis "lies mostly with Iraq," slightly softening his previous defence of Baghdad.

The statements came ahead of a crucial meeting of the UN Security Council Wednesday during which US Secretary of State Colin Powell is to present US intelligence purported to show Saddam has links to al-Qaeda and is hiding weapons of mass destruction.

"While there will be no 'smoking gun,' we will provide evidence concerning the weapons programs that Iraq is working so hard to hide," Powell wrote in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal newspaper.

Iraq predicted Powell's speech would be "made up of lies and fabrications" and called on other Arab countries to jointly lend it support.

It also prepared to hold talks with chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix next weekend after promising to remove obstacles he has cited.

Blix's inspectors found a small, short-range missile with a modified warhead at a military site near Baghdad linked to suspected illegal weapons production, Iraq's officials INA news agency said Monday.

The agency said the the warhead had "nothing to do with the former banned (arms) programmes."

In a significant sign of gathering war clouds, the Polish embassy in Baghdad said it was closing its US interests section -- Washington's sole diplomatic presence in Iraq since after the Gulf War in 1991.

The three Polish diplomats in the department would be leaving by road for neighbouring Jordan on Wednesday and then for "long consultations" in Warsaw, the embassy said.

Other diplomatic sources in Baghdad said the representatives for Yugoslavia and Spain had already gone, giving the same reason.

The United States, Britain and Australia are assembling a massive force in the Gulf south of Iraq. By mid-February, there will be more than 150,000 service personnel, at least four aircraft carriers and hundreds of aircraft in the region.

According to reports quoting US and British officials, war plans call for the United States to blitz Iraq with 3,000 guided bombs and missiles in the first two days in a bid to demoralise Saddam's forces.

Bush has said he will give Iraq "weeks, not months" to prove it has no weapons of mass destruction, failing which he was willing to order an invasion with or without an explicit UN mandate.

Blair stressed to British MPs that he and Bush wanted a new UN resolution "provided -- as ever -- that seeking such a resolution is a way of resolving the issue not delaying or avoiding dealing with it at all."

Blair spent the morning speaking on the telephone to French President Jacques Chirac, who declared last week that a US-led attack on Iraq is not justified. France has hinted it may use its Security Council veto to block a new resolution.

On Tuesday the two men are to meet face-to-face at a summit in Le Touquet, northern France.

Russia, another veto-wielding council member, shares France's view that the UN inspectors should be given time to complete their work.

But Putin said after a meeting near Moscow with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi -- a key Bush ally -- that "Baghdad must answer as to what they have done with their weapons... and the inspectors must tell us if they are satisfied, or if they need anything else."

Putin said that in his view a second UN resolution on Iraq was "not essential, though we cannot rule one out."

In Iraq, the Babel newspaper run by Saddam's son Uday called for the Arab League to move forward a March summit to "counter the stupid American threats."

The ruling Baath party said through its Ath-Thawra publication: "The Bush administration is trying to confuse and blackmail other members of the Security Council ... to win new concessions from them and have a free hand to carry out an attack on Iraq."

Powell will not furnish "the slightest material proof to back the untruthful accusations made by his president against Iraq," it said.

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