US President George Bush has not yet decided how to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from power, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told Russian RTR television on Tuesday.
”The president has not yet decided how to act in such a situation. But he stressed that the status quo is unacceptable, and that a change of regime in Iraq is necessary,” Rice said.
She said Saddam was ”a very dangerous and cruel man” and ”it would be a serious mistake to let him pursue his policies and wait until he uses a nuclear weapon or any other mass destruction weapon against some country”.
The prospect of US military intervention in Iraq grew over the weekend as Bush spoke in favour of overthrowing the Baghdad regime.
The options presented by the US military have included an invasion requiring a 250 000-strong force attacking Iraq from three directions and a direct assault on power centres in Baghdad that would combine ground and air power.
Rice added that Washington and its allies were due to work out a ”plan of action”, but did not elaborate.
The United States counts Iraq as part of the ”axis of evil”, accused along with Iran and North Korea of seeking to develop weapons of mass destruction.
Meanwhile, Secretary-General Kofi Annan has asked Iraq to accept the Security Council roadmap for the return of UN weapons inspectors, rejecting Baghdad’s latest proposal to deal with outstanding issues about its alleged weapons of mass destruction.
In a letter responding to Iraq’s invitation for chief weapons inspector Hans Blix to visit Baghdad, Annan said he looked forward to Iraq’s agreement to the UN’s ”sequence of steps” and a formal invitation to the UN inspection agency to resume work after nearly four years.
The letter thanked Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri for inviting Blix for technical talks but made clear that the Iraqi agenda was at odds with UN Security Council requirements for the resumption of inspections.
In last week’s invitation, Sabri said Iraq wants Blix and its own experts to determine the outstanding issues regarding Iraq’s banned weapons programs and figure out how to resolve them before inspectors return.
But a 1999 Security Council resolution requires UN weapons inspectors to visit Iraq and then determine within 60 days what questions Iraq still must answer about its chemical, biological, nuclear and missile programs. The Security Council must approve the list of outstanding issues.
Annan cited the provisions of this resolution in the letter, stressing that the council had clearly instructed the UN inspection agency to start its work by identifying the outstanding disarmament tasks that Iraq must fulfil.
He noted that Blix had expressed his readiness to transmit the list of outstanding issues to the Iraqi government for comment before his report went to the Security Council.
”It should therefore be possible at that time for Iraq to express its views and to provide any additional information which may be relevant,” Annan said.
Annan discussed the invitation to Blix with the 15-member Security Council on Monday and spoke to the chief inspector, who is vacationing in Sweden, on Tuesday before sending the letter through Iraq’s UN Mission.
”I have no problem with discussions at the technical level. But my concern is the agenda and how it proceeds,” Annan said on Tuesday.
”I think the letter will clarify that we welcome the invitation, but that we would want to proceed along other lines.
”I hope once they’ve read the letter, they will find their way to become more forthcoming,” the secretary-general said.
In his letter to Sabri, Annan noted that during a third round of UN-Iraq talks in Vienna in early July, Blix suggested ”that the most direct and appropriate way to resume the inspection process would be by holding talks at the expert level on practical arrangements for inspections.”
Blix told Swedish Radio on Tuesday: ”We want discussions with them (the Iraqis) about practical arrangements: How we fly in, what authorities we deal with there. We don’t want conflict once we’re in.”
Blix said he found little new in the Iraqi letter, calling the language similar to ideas Iraq raised during the three rounds of UN-Iraq talks.
Iraq sent a follow-up note to council members on Monday saying it did not want to discuss any new issues that inspectors might raise after returning to Iraq.
However, it wanted to review with Blix the disarmament issues that were outstanding when inspectors left December 15, 1998, ahead of US and British air strikes punishing Iraq for not cooperating.
The Iraqis also were concerned about US President George Bush’s call for Saddam Hussein’s ouster and growing indications from the US Congress that war with Iraq is likely.
The United States accuses Iraq of trying to rebuild its banned weapons programs and of supporting terrorism, and has threatened unspecified consequences if inspectors are not allowed to return.
The Iraqi note warned that unless the outstanding issues were resolved there would be a repetition of the crises over weapons inspections that took place from 1991 to 1998 that would be followed by the departure of inspectors ”and then the United States will call for an aggression on Iraq.”
Under council resolutions, sanctions imposed after Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait cannot be lifted until UN inspectors certify that its weapons of mass destruction have been destroyed. – Sapa-AP