Bush orders Gulf army to be doubled
President Bush has ordered the 50,000 US troops in the Gulf to be doubled by next month as he steps up the pressure on the UN Security Council to authorise war on Iraq.
Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is expected to sign the formal deployment order in the next week or two as part of what an administration official called “a ramping up on various fronts.”
After concluding that Saddam Hussein is not serious about disarmament, the Bush team turned today turned to convincing the Security Council that it should declare Iraq in violation of international demands.
“This situation cannot continue,” Secretary of State Colin Powell said, describing Iraq’s weapons declaration as 12,200 pages of lies, gaps and omissions.
Unless Iraq “comes clean” in the weeks ahead, “I’m afraid we should be very discouraged with respect to the prospects of finding a peaceful solution,” Powell said.
If military conflict is now more likely, it is not imminent, other senior US officials said.
Bush will spend the next five or six weeks in pursuit of more evidence against Saddam while massing troops outside Iraq for a potential winter assault, the officials said on condition of anonymity.
Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix complained today that the US and Britain have not given inspectors the support they need – chiefly, intelligence on where Iraqis are allegedly hiding their weapons material.
In response, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer pointed to Powell’s promise that the United States will provide additional intelligence to make the inspectors’ search “more targeted and effective.”
The United States will continue to analyse Iraq’s weapons declaration, but has so far concluded that its omissions constitute a “material breach” of the UN resolution that compelled Iraq to disclose its deadly weapons, Powell said.
Although the term “material breach” is widely interpreted as a prelude to war, Powell said there is no ”calendar deadline” to disarm Iraq by force.
Bush was expected to offer his own public comment on Iraq’s declaration, largely echoing Powell, during a meeting with UN, Russian and EU diplomats in Washington today
Bush could also use the meeting to lobby the foreign ministers and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Iraq, White House aides said.
