U.S. President Bush has no timetable for determining whether to forcibly disarm Iraq, the White House said Thursday. Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer termed the January 27 deadline merely "an important reporting date."
The White House again insisted Iraq does have banned weapons and warned Baghdad time was running out to avoid war. "The problem with guns that are hidden is you can't see their smoke," Fleischer said. "We know for a fact that there are weapons there."
He also suggested that the United States' military buildup could be useful as a tactic to prod Saddam Hussein to comply with U.N. requirements.
"The military has effective influence on diplomacy and making sure that Saddam Hussein understands that he needs to comply," Fleischer said. "Because if he doesn't, the United States has the means and the ability to make him comply."
Underscoring war preparations, the Marine Corps said it had taken the unusual step of stopping all Marines, active-duty as well as reserve, from leaving the service for the coming 12 months. The last time the Marines took this action, known as "stop-loss," was during the buildup to the 1991 Gulf War, said Capt. Gabrielle Chapin, a spokeswoman at the Combat Development Command at Quantico, Va.
Meanwhile, the U.N. has raised the possibility of taking Iraqi scientists to Cyprus for questioning, an Iraqi official said Thursday, according to AP.
Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin, the chief Iraqi liaison officer to the U.N. teams, said the idea of questioning Iraqis in another state was not raised as a formal request. Asked how Iraq responded, he repeated Baghdad's position that scientists could decide for themselves — but that they were expected to refuse.
"There is nothing official that has been presented to our side in this regard but ... there was an oral request by one inspector," Amin said. "The matter is up to the person themselves ... (but) nobody is ready to go outside for an interview with" inspectors.
Amin also said he had complained in a letter to the United Nations about "dubious" questions he said inspectors have posed during their work.
"I gave them examples of incidents where the questions were irrelevant to the work," Amin said during a weekly Iraqi government media briefing on the inspections. (Albawaba.com)
© 2003 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
