The U.S. wants it to look like Blair played a part in the policy-making

WASHINGTON, January 24 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – U.S. President George W. Bush is "to turn up the heat" in his state of the union address on Tuesday, UK-based newspapers reported Friday, January 24.

Bush is determined to go to war with Saddam Hussein in the next few weeks, without UN backing if necessary, the Guardian quoted authoritative sources in Washington and London as saying.

"The pressure comes from President Bush and it is felt all the way down," a European official said. "They're talking about weeks, not months; 'months' is a banned word now."

Bush wanted the U.S. secretary of state, Colin Powell, to force the issue of military action by presenting ‘evidence’ of Saddam Hussein's violations of UN resolutions immediately after weapons inspectors give their report to the UN on Monday. In Washington circles such an event is being referred to as the Adlai Stevenson moment, the paper said.

The "Adlai Stevenson moment" has become Washington shorthand for the U.S. presentation of its intelligence case. Stevenson was the U.S. ambassador to the UN at the time of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, who dramatically confronted the Soviet envoy with vivid aerial photographs of nuclear missiles being unloaded in Cuba.

Downing Street was alarmed by the Bush administration's sudden haste in moving towards a climax. It was adamant that the decision to go to war should not be declared before Tony Blair flies to Camp David for talks with Bush next Friday, the Guardian reported.

Blair is a ‘good guy’

An informed source in Washington said, "Blair is a good guy. They won't want to do that to him. They want it to look like he played a part in the policy-making but the decision has been made."

A key moment will now be the state of the union address. According to a Washington source, the U.S. administration remains divided along old fault lines about the precise timescale of war.

The U.S. secretary of state Donald Rumsfeld wants Bush to set a clear and imminent deadline. But Powell is resisting, asking for a little more time for diplomatic coalition-building.

But both sides of the divide are making it increasingly clear that the end result will be military action, with or without UN backing, the Guardian wrote.

The impatience within the White House for action against Iraq came on a day in which the cracks in the international coalition against Iraq widened. China and Russia joined France and Germany is warning the U.S. against precipitate action and calling for Washington to work within the UN.

Cool down

The German foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, revealed the extent of European anger over the U.S. position when he told Washington to "cool down".

The Russian foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, said: "Russia deems that there is no evidence that would justify a war in Iraq."

But Rumsfeld's deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, ratcheted up the rhetoric by claiming that Iraqi scientists were at risk of death. "We know from multiple sources that Saddam has ordered that any scientists who cooperate during interviews will be killed, as well as their families," he said.

Britain believes it has won a short reprieve before the U.S. presents its own intelligence evidence against Saddam Hussein, in effect a declaration of war, but only for a fortnight at most, according to the Guardian.

Bush will lay out the broad case for toppling President Saddam next Tuesday but White House officials insist the speech, a year after the president coined the phrase, "axis of evil", will stop short of being a declaration of war. That will await a more detailed presentation of intelligence evidence in the next few weeks, after Blair visits Camp David, it added.

"We said that has to be a substantive consultation, not a fait accompli," one British official said.

The British argument is that the longer the U.S. waits before showing its hand, the better the case it will have to put before the UN Security Council, as the inspectors come across more Iraqi infringements.