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| Sunday, 12 January 2003 |
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US accelerates Gulf military buildup as EU warns against war with Iraq WASHINGTON, Saturday (AFP) The United States Friday ordered another 35,000 troops to the Gulf despite pleas from European allies to avoid war with Iraq. US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld signed deployment orders for the new wave of reinforcements, which will include marines and more fighter aircraft, a senior US official said. The deployments come on top of 25,000 troops Rumsfeld ordered deployed to the Gulf just before Christmas. And Secretary of State Colin Powell reiterated that the United States was resolved to disarm Iraq through military means if necessary, with or without UN approval. "I think the international community...has spoken clearly," Powell said after meeting with International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohammed ElBaradei. "Iraq must be disarmed of its weapons of mass destruction. And if it isn't accomplished peacefully...then I think the Security Council has to take the action that's indicated and determine whether or not force is appropriate." President George W. Bush has "made it clear that we reserve the right...in the absence of international action to disarm Iraq, to act with like-minded nations to disarm Iraq. And we are positioning ourselves for whatever eventuality might occur," Powell said. Earlier this week, British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon announced plans to deploy a force comprising 3,000 marine commandos and called up 1,500 reservists in readiness for possible war against Iraq. Hoon said as long as Iraq's compliance with UN resolutions was in doubt, the threat of force "must remain and it must be real." However, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw spoke more moderately, saying, after talks in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur that Britain was committed to acting through the UN Security Council before being involved in any war. After weeks of procrastinating, Turkey reluctantly gave the US military buildup a boost by agreeing to have its air bases and ports examined for possible use during any military conflict. Turkey fears war in neighboring Iraq would send its cripple its economy and stoke independence ambitions of its restive Kurdish population, which, with Iraqi Kurds forms the core of the Iraqi opposition. In an apparent attempt to make clear it was not alienating itself from Iraq, Turkey's state minister for external trade, Kursat Tuzmen, arrived in Baghdad with 350 Turkish businessmen to talk bilateral trade. Tuzmen said he also carried a message from Turkish Prime Minister Abdullah Gul to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein that underlined "the importance of UN resolutions and the need for everyone to fulfill their duties to ensure lasting peace in the region." But many allies, particularly in Europe, are worried about moves toward conflict. In Athens, Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis, whose country currently chairs the European Union, said, "Our desire and intention is that there should be no war...We don't want a war." German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder also hardened his own antiwar position on Iraq. He promised that Germany, which this year assumed a nonpermanent seat on the UN Security Council, would do "everything it can" to prevent war. Schroeder reiterated that even if the council decided on military action, Germany would not take part. Next week, chief UN arms inspector Hans Blix is to brief senior EU diplomats in Brussels on the progress of weapons inspections in Iraq, his spokeswoman said. Blix plans to travel to Baghdad in the third week of January, and on January 27 is to present a crucial report to the UN Security Council on the inspectors' preliminary findings. EU foreign policy head Javier Solana said the report would not be the "end of the road" to a diplomatic solution to the crisis, reiterating that any decision on Iraq must be taken via the "international legality" of the United Nations. UN arms inspectors meanwhile stepped up their search for banned Iraqi weaponry after their chiefs told the council they had yet to find a "smoking gun." Inspectors searched four sites in Iraq on their 42nd day, scouring two warehouses in Baghdad, a factory in Baghdad's southern suburbs and a firm dealing in pharmaceuticals and medical equipment in the suburb of Al-Amariya. The teams fanned out around the Iraqi capital hours after IAEA chief ElBaradei earlier said Baghdad's failure to make Iraqi scientists available for private interviews was not the "proactive cooperation we expect." Iraq, in turn, insisted it was up to individual scientists to decide whether to travel abroad for the interviews and insisted most would elect not to do so. Washington has been piling pressure on the UN mission to use new powers to whisk scientists and their families out of the country for questioning to prevent any possibility of intimidation by Iraq. |
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