Bush: Iraq Action Not Imminent
President Bush said Friday he believed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but that the United States had "no imminent plans" to attack.
"What I've told others, including President Fox, is we have no imminent plans to use military operations," Bush said in Monterrey after meeting with Mexican President Vicente Fox. "We'll be deliberate. We'll consult with our friends and allies. But we'll deal with Saddam Hussein, and he knows that. We'd like to see a regime change in Iraq."
In his State of the Union address earlier this year Bush included Iraq in a three-country "axis of evil," with Iran and North Korea, that might be future targets in the U.S. war on terrorism.
the head of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, has rejected the idea that Western-friendly Arab states would accept fresh military action against Iraq if Washington helped broker a truce between Israelis and Palestinians.
He said in an interview with London's Financial Times that Arabs were seeking a diplomatic solution to the Iraq question regardless of any progress in talks to end the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation.
"I don't see any linkage. The Arab-Israeli conflict is one thing. The Iraqi-Kuwait conflict is a different one," he said.
Iraq is still under U.N. sanctions imposed after it invaded Kuwait in 1990. A U.S.-led coalition drove Iraqi forces from Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War but Iraq is still at odds with the West over allowing United Nations weapons inspectors into the country.
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein said Friday he was pleased with his envoys' tours to Arab countries to rally opposition to possible U.S. military action.
Saddam sent senior Iraqi officials to almost all Arab capitals except Riyadh and Kuwait, Iraq's 1991 Gulf War foes, to counter a 11-nation tour of the Middle East by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney.
Arab leaders at next week's summit in Beirut must strike a balance between opposing possible U.S. military action against Iraq and securing American support for a Middle East peace proposal.
Analysts have said that leaders at the March 27-28 annual meeting would be eager to avoid angering Washington by taking a hard-line position against military action in Iraq. That stance would put at risk the U.S. support vital for a push to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
Some observers think a more general summit statement on Iraq might be the solution to the delicate diplomatic problem Arab leaders will face in Beirut.
"The problem is that if the summit issued any resolution supporting the Iraqi regime it would mean losing the American support (to find a solution) to the Palestinian issue," Mustafa Alani, an Iraqi-born analyst based in London, told Reuters.
"A more general resolution on Iraq will resolve the problem. With guarantees that there would be no Arab support for a strike against Iraq, Baghdad might go along with this," Alani said.
Analysts said they expected the summit to reiterate the need for Iraq to comply with all United Nations resolutions, including a resumption of inspections for weapons of mass destruction — a key U.S. demand.