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House Leaders Give Bush Green Light to Attack Iraq

Anti-war protesters at the White House gates chanted "No War on Iraq"

WASHINGTON, October 2 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – One of the increasingly few obstacles blocking a U.S. aggression against Iraq has almost been removed, with U.S. President George W. Bush, who insists on attacking Iraq even if unilaterally, reaching a deal with House Leaders to the effect he must notify them "not later" than 48 hours after attacking Iraq.

According to the deal released Wednesday, October 2, Bush may use force against Iraq in a manner "necessary and appropriate", Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

"The president is pleased that the resolution gives him the ‘tools he needs’" to launch war on Iraq "and that it does so in a way that does not tie his hands," Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters.

Announcing the deal shortly after the White House made the agreed-upon resolution public, Fleischer said Bush believes that chances for approval by Republicans and opposition Democrats in the House was "exceptionally strong."

The resolution requires Bush to notify House and Senate leaders before any military action, or not later than 48 hours after it begins, that diplomacy has been exhausted or is doomed to fail.

"The president is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to: 1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq, and 2) enforce all relevant United Nations resolutions regarding Iraq," according to the text.

With the U.S. Senate still trying to bridge differences between Republicans and opposition Democrats, the House International Relations Committee was to take up the bill Wednesday, ahead of a full House vote expected next week.

Lawmakers will have opportunities to change the language, but they are unlikely to mount any serious challenge to a resolution agreed to by leaders of both parties and the White House, according to AFP.

Meanwhile, U.S. officials said Wednesday that the United States is stepping up pressure on U.N. Security Council members as it is wary that an agreement between the United Nations and Iraq on the return of arms inspectors will hurt its case for a tough new U.N. resolution on disarmament.

At the United Nations, U.S. diplomats were to meet separately with British, French and Russian colleagues to try to craft new rules for inspections, a day before chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix is to brief the Security Council on the deal he reached with Iraq Tuesday, October 1, in Vienna, the officials said.

"This is a call to action," one senior State Department official said, echoing Secretary of State Colin Powell's appeal late Tuesday to the Security Council to keep up the pressure on Iraq.

"We don't want what happened in Vienna to become an excuse for inaction," a second official said.

The inspectors could return to Iraq under existing resolutions, but Washington is opposed and has signaled it will "thwart" any move to send Blix's team back until a new resolution is approved.

"We do not believe that they should go back in under the old set of resolutions and under the old inspection regime, and therefore we do not believe that they should go in until they have new instructions in the form of a new resolution," he said.

The senior official claimed that Blix, who reports to the Security Council, had not been able to address those restrictions at his meetings in Vienna because he did not yet have a mandate to do so.

It is the details of that mandate that the diplomats at the United Nations were to work on Wednesday, the official said.

"We're OK with what Blix is doing now; it's what he is going to be able to do that we're concerned about," the official said. "He was not able to address the palaces issue because he doesn't have instructions to do so."

That official and others said there was general agreement among the veto-wielding five permanent Security Council members – Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States – to give Blix a new mandate, AFP said.

Russia, which last month had said it did not see the need for any new resolution, has now backed off that position, with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov saying Wednesday that Moscow could go along with one "if necessary".

China, which has remained largely silent on the issue, is expected to abstain.

However, the U.S. officials said that profound differences still existed with France on whether there should be one all-inclusive resolution, containing the U.N. demands as well as the option to use military force in the event of non-compliance, or two resolutions.

Until and unless that rift is bridged, the drafting of new rules for the inspectors is compromised, the officials said.

"If we solve the issue of consequences with the French, then we think the Council can come together with new authority," one official said.

France is insisting on two resolutions, one with the demands and, later, a second one, if necessary, that would lay out the consequences for failure to comply.

Washington is becoming increasingly annoyed by the French position, and one U.S. official predicted that unless there was movement by week's end, that irritation would begin to become public.

The official recalled that Bush had challenged the United Nations on September 12 to prove its relevance by dealing with Iraq in "weeks, not months" and said patience was wearing thin.

"If we don't come away with a significant feeling of satisfaction by the end of this week, there will be a push to start questioning the relevance of the Security Council," the official said.

"Most of that will be directed at France."

With the diplomatic and public relations maneuvers going on, warplanes roared off the scorching deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier Wednesday with sailors and pilots saying they are waiting for the call to focus on military action against Iraq.

"Our resolve will be set when our nation's resolve is," Lieutenant Anton Orr, who pilots a single seater F/A-18C Hornet, said of the current Iraq crisis.

"We don't set policy, we just follow it," Orr, who goes by the call name of "Gasm", told AFP.

The Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72), weighing 97,500 tones, is responsible for helping enforce a "no-fly zone" over southern Iraq, code-named Operation Southern Watch (OSW), which Britain and the United States imposed after the 1991 Gulf War.

The so-called "no-fly zones" are not sanctioned by any U.N. resolution.

Washington's fifth Nimitz-class aircraft carrier has a crew of some 5,500, around 70 aircraft with its embarked air wing and is currently in the northern Arabian Sea about to enter Gulf waters.

The ship, which "stands ready at all times," will also front the U.S.-led multinational fleet, the maritime interception force (MIF), which patrols Gulf waters to enforce a U.N. embargo that has stifled Iraq for more than a decade.

"We're just out here to do our job," said U.S. Navy spokesman Chief Dave Rush.

What that job will be looked unpredictable Wednesday, a day after an accord in Vienna between Iraq and the United Nations for a swift return of weapons inspectors to Baghdad.