United States President George Bush on Thursday warned of heavy fighting and bloodshed to come in the next ”critical” weeks and months in Iraq, and told Iran it faces tougher sanctions over its nuclear defiance.
In a White House news conference, Bush also said that US forces would pull out of Iraq if asked to do so by the Baghdad government, and called on Iraqi leaders to repay US sacrifices with political progress.
”This summer is going to be a critical time for the new strategy,” Bush said in the news conference in the White House Rose Garden, carried live on US television networks.
”We’re going to expect heavy fighting in the weeks and months” to come, Bush said, predicting more bloodshed as his strategy to surge nearly 30 000 more troops into Iraq reaches its peak.
The top US general in Iraq, David Petraeus, is due to report in September on the progress of the strategy, and Bush predicted that US enemies in the war-torn country would use the intervening weeks to do their best to force his hand.
”It could make August a tough month, because, you see, what they’re going to try to do is kill as many innocent people as they can to try to influence the debate here at home,” he said.
Despite his warnings that an early pull-out of US troops from Iraq would be disastrous, Bush said he would have no option but to order a withdrawal if it was demanded by the Iraqi government.
”We are there at the invitation of the Iraqi government. This is a sovereign nation,” he said. ”If they were to say ‘leave,’ we would leave.”
”I would hope that they would recognise that the results would be catastrophic,” he said. ”Failure in Iraq will cause generations to suffer, in my judgement. Al-Qaeda will be emboldened.”
Bush also had a new warning for Iran.
”We need to strengthen our sanctions regime,” Bush said. ”We will work with our European partners to develop further sanctions.”
The German presidency of the European Union earlier urged Iran to rethink its nuclear programme after the United Nations atomic watchdog warned that Tehran could acquire nuclear weapons within three to eight years. — AFP
