Bush speech challenges UN to live up to its name
US President George W Bush’s speech to the general assembly amounted to a challenge to the United Nations to live up to its responsibility.
”Iraq has answered a decade of UN demands with a decade of defiance,” Bush said.
”All the world now faces a test...and the United Nations, a difficult and defining moment. Are Security Council resolutions to be honoured and enforced...or cast aside without consequence? Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding...or will it be irrelevant?”
The president offered to work in concert with other nations on a resolution “to meet our common challenge.”
And, he said, “if the Iraqi regime defies us again the world must move deliberately and decisively” against the Iraqi leader.
Bush’s expression of willingness to act through the United Nations appeared to respond to a growing chorus of opposition to unilateral US. military action to topple Saddam.
A senior US official said Secretary of State Colin Powell would work on Friday with the four other permanent members of the Security Council - Russia, China, France and Britain - on a resolution that would set a deadline for Iraq to comply with demands that it admit weapons inspectors.
A failure to act, Bush said, would mean betting the lives of millions in a reckless gamble. “And this is a risk we must not take,” he declared.
”By heritage and by choice, the United States of America will make that stand,” the president said.
“Delegates to the United Nations, you have the power to make that stand, as well!”
Bush said that if Iraq defies a new UN resolution demanding the return of inspectors, “the world must move deliberately and decisively” against Saddam.
Before Bush spoke, Annan warned against unilateralism and said any action against Iraq required the legitimacy of UN approval.
The senior US official did not say what deadline would be set in a new resolution. But he did say the resolution would demand compliance within weeks, not months.
Already, US military forces are being moved into position to strike against Iraq. Core staff of the US military command responsible for operations in the Gulf and Central Asia will be shifted from their headquarters in Florida to the Gulf nation of Qatar in November, defence officials said Wednesday.
In his speech, Bush denounced Iraq for a decade of defiance of UN resolutions calling for weapons inspections and disarmament. “The conduct of the Iraqi regime is a threat to the authority of the United Nations and a threat to peace,” he said.
On a personal note, Bush said that Iraq’s violence and terrorism led to the attempted assassination of his father, former President George Bush and the emir of Kuwait in 1993.
”Saddam Hussein has made the case against himself,” Bush said.
Reflecting long-standing impatience among some Americans with UN inaction on various fronts, Bush said, “We created a United Nations Security Council so that - unlike the League of Nations - our actions would be more than talk.”
In fact, Bush said, “We want the resolutions of the world’s most important multinational body to be in force. Right now these resolutions are being unilaterally subverted by the Iraqi regime.”
Iraq’s UN Ambassador Mohammed Al-Douri sat in Iraq’s seat in the General Assembly chamber, headphones on, listening to Bush’s speech.
Bush backed his call on the other nations to pressure Iraq to comply with a hefty document accusing Saddam of a decade of deception and defiance of 16 UN resolutions.
His administration has made clear it feels justified in going it alone if necessary and contends it does not need new legal authority to use force to try to oust Saddam.
“For more than a decade, Saddam Hussein has deceived and defied the will and resolutions of the United Nations Security Council,” said the document, circulated in advance of Bush’s speech.
It warned that Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb. In the past 14 months, it said, Iraq has tried to purchase thousands of specially designed aluminium tubes that officials believe were intended as components of centrifuges to help produce weapons-grade uranium.
Bush wants the nations of the UN - there are 190 of them - to pressure Saddam to readmit international inspectors after a lapse of more than three years. He wants inspectors to look for hidden arms and then to compel Saddam to disarm.
These demands are rooted in resolutions adopted during and after the 1990-91 Gulf War - policy declarations which forced Iraq to reverse its annexation of Kuwait. Iraq denies that it is developing weapons of mass destruction.
President Bush told delegates that the UN faced a "difficult and defining moment".
In a challenge to the organisation, he demanded: "Are UN resolutions to be honoured and enforced or cast aside without consequence?"
