LACHLAN CARMICHAEL, Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt | Thursday
US VICE-President Dick Cheney said on Wednesday that weapons of mass destruction, the “tools of genocide”, were the next target in the US-led war on terror.
However, his Egyptian host President Hosni Mubarak predicted that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein would re-admit UN weapons inspectors, in line with Security Council demands.
Arab leaders have expressed growing fears that Baghdad is in US crosshairs.
Cheney, speaking in a joint press conference with Mubarak, did not say whether the two leaders had discussed an eventual US military strike on Iraq, but he did say they discussed the “threat that weapons of mass destruction pose to all of us.”
He also stressed the potential terrorist threat from nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, while earlier visiting US peacekeeping forces in the Sinai just south of Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
“Our next objective is to prevent terrorists, and regimes that sponsor terror, from threatening America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction,” Cheney said.
“We take this threat with great seriousness,” Cheney told US and other troops with the multinational peacekeeping force patrolling the Sinai desert following the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.
“The United States will not permit the forces of terror to gain the tools of genocide,” Cheney added.
Both Egypt and Jordan, which Cheney visited prior to his arrival in Sharm el-Sheikh, have advised Washington against striking Iraq as part of its war on terror, warning of regional instability.
“We’ll try hard with Saddam Hussein to accept the UN inspectors,” Mubarak told a US journalist who asked whether toppling the Iraqi leader was the best way to keep the world safe from nuclear or some other new form of terror.
“I think, as far as my knowledge is, he’s going to accept the inspectors,” Mubarak said, adding that Arab officials had been consulting with Saddam on the subject.
Mubarak suggested the best way to ensure that Iraq had destroyed its weapons of mass destruction was deploying inspectors in the country, but he also did not rule out another method.
“We will try in this direction as far as we can,” he said. “If nothing happens, we will find out what can be done.”
Cheney said earlier that the US “war on terror” had achieved major successes, by putting the former Taliban rulers of Afghanistan “out of business, permanently,” while forcing their al-Qaida allies to run.
On October 7, Washington launched its war in Afghanistan to destroy the al-Qaida network of Osama Ben Laden, blamed for the September 11 suicide airline hijackings in the United States.
Cheney and Mubarak both stressed the need to diffuse escalating Israeli-Palestinian violence as Israel led an unprecedented military offensive against Palestinian militants in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
“We plan to do everything we can to persuade both parties it is time for the violence to end,” Cheney told reporters.
“I think the burden is on both parties to bring an end to the violence,” Cheney told a US journalist who asked whether Washington had shifted the burden from Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
The Arabs have long accused the United States of bias towards Israel, and Arab commentators have charged that Cheney and US Middle East peace envoy Anthony Zinni, due Thursday in the region, were trying to soothe Arab concerns for the Palestinians while preparing a war on Iraq.
Cheney restated US George Bush’s vision for a Middle East peace, with an Israeli and Palestinian state living side by side, and called for implementation of US-backed proposals for a ceasefire and a return to negotiations.
Cheney arrived here from Jordan where he said on Tuesday that Bush had sent him to the region to discuss “our cooperative effort to fight global terrorism and our determination to promote Arab-Israeli peace and reconciliation.”
His Arab tour also takes him to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar and Yemen. Cheney will also visit Israel and Turkey. – AFP