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Bush doubts Iraq will meet deadline
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NEW
YORK, September 13 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – U.S.
President George W. Bush declared Friday, September 13, that a new UN
resolution on Iraq must demand Baghdad's compliance in "days and
weeks, not months and years" under the threat of possible
military action.
"There
will be deadlines within the resolution," he told reporters a day
after demanding UN action on Iraq. "We must have deadlines, and
we're talking days and weeks, not months and years."
Bush,
speaking as he met with Central African leaders, again warned the
United Nations that its response to the threats posed by Baghdad would
determine the world body's place in international affairs, Agence
France-Presse (AFP) said.
"How
we deal with this problem will help determine the fate of a
multilateral body that has been unilaterally ignored by Saddam
Hussein. Will this body be able to keep the peace and deal with the
true threats ... or will it be irrelevant," he said.
In
a tough speech to the United Nations Thursday, September 12, Bush left
Saddam a splinter of a chance to avoid military action by swiftly
complying with the 16 UN resolutions he agreed to live by in order to
end the 1991 Gulf War.
And
he warned the UN General Assembly delegates that failure to act would
mean that unilateral U.S. "action will be unavoidable. And a
regime that has lost its legitimacy will also lose its power."
Bush
laid out five demands of Saddam: scrap his biological, chemical, and
nuclear weapons programs and stockpiles; end support for terrorism;
end persecution of Iraq's civilian population; free or account for
non-Iraqi citizens missing since the Gulf War; and end all efforts to
circumvent UN economic sanctions.
He
also said he was "highly doubtful" that Iraqi leader Saddam
Hussein will meet his demands to comply swiftly and fully with UN
resolutions aimed at disarming him.
"I
am highly doubtful that he will meet our demands. I hope he does but
I'm highly doubtful," Bush told reporters. "For 11 long
years, he has basically told the United Nations and the world that he
doesn't care."
"If
all these steps are taken, it will signal a new openness and
accountability in Iraq," as well as potentially herald the start
of peaceful UN efforts to craft a new government in Baghdad, he said
in his address.
Baghdad
has always insisted that it did not possess biological, chemical, or
any other kind of mass destruction weapons. Moreover, it challenged
the U.S. and its ally Britain to come up with any concrete evidence to
back up allegations to the opposite.
Observers
believe Bush will go ahead and attack Iraq, any way, even if Baghdad
complied with UN resolutions, mostly for internal reasons related to
the coming Congressional polls in next November
