War Countdown Clock Ticks Away

The machinery of war and diplomacy rolled forward side-by-side at the White House on Saturday as the Bush administration prepared for imminent decisions about military action in Iraq by both the president and international allies.

President Bush, who usually spends weekends at Camp David, stayed at the White House, where a few thousand anti-war protesters gathered off the back lawn in a protest tied to International Women's Day. Similar demonstrations were held in several other nations.

Mr. Bush remained in town to attend Saturday evening's annual Gridiron dinner, a ritual songfest that features journalists lampooning the leaders and topics of the day.

In his weekly radio address Saturday, Mr. Bush reiterated his case for quick action against Iraq's leader, suspected of possessing banned weapons of mass destruction.

"As a last resort, we must be willing to use military force," the president said. "We are doing everything we can to avoid war in Iraq. But if Saddam Hussein does not disarm peacefully, he will be disarmed by force."

The president engaged in uphill diplomacy, making calls to foreign leaders, hoping to win support in the United Nations Security Council for a U.S.-British-Spanish proposal that paves the way for war by giving Saddam Hussein until March 17 to disarm.

But CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson says that very telephone diplomacy could, ironically, be one reason he's having so much trouble getting traditional allies on board.

In the first Gulf War, one analyst pointed out to Attkisson, George Bush Senior dispatched top diplomats such as Secretary of State James Baker for face-to-face talks with allies, and a coalition of 41 countries was quickly assembled. But this time, Attkisson says, Europeans looking for one-on-one hand-holding aren't getting it.

Secretary of State Colin Powell and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice were also chipping in on the diplomatic phone front.

The three planned to lobby allies by telephone through the weekend and up until next week's planned vote on the new resolution. Aides did not rule out travel for them.

The new resolution, due for a vote next week in New York, faces strong opposition from veto-wielding council members and not yet enough backing yet from others to pass, even without a veto.

If the resolution fails, as seemed likely, military action could come within days, officials have said. The timetable is less certain if it passes.

But war planning continued as well, with Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz paying a visit to the West Wing.

In Kuwait, military convoys rumble out day and night on six-lane highways relaying arms, vehicles, fuel and troops. The final pieces are falling into place for any attack on Iraq - and U.S. and British officers in the sprawling new desert camps around Kuwait City say they are only days away from full force if the order comes.

CBS News correspondent John Roberts, who's in Kuwait with waiting U.S. Marines, says the sense there is one of the inevitability of an attack on Iraq- of a chain of events that is about to reach critical mass.

Britain insisted Saturday that the U.N. Security Council could still back the final deadline for Iraq, as France mounted a last-minute diplomatic dash to rally opposition to war, and Russia warned that an attack on Iraq without U.N. backing would violate the world body's charter.

While U.S. and British diplomats worked feverishly behind the scenes to line up support in the Security Council, France's foreign minister scheduled a last-minute visit to Africa to win swing votes and French President Jacques Chirac called for an emergency summit to find a compromise.

France, which is heading opposition to war, had been insisting the U.S.-British drive for the U.N. resolution was doomed, but its sudden diplomatic activity indicated Paris may no longer be so confident.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said he was confident of winning majority support for the resolution he presented to the council Friday.

The United States and Britain have massed some 300,000 troops for a possible attack on Iraq.

"We are at a difficult time, but I believe that by the process of argument we should be able to get to a point where we can get a second resolution," Straw told British Broadcasting Corp. radio.

France, Russia and China - which along with Britain and the United States hold vetoes on the Security Council - rejected the call, put forward after chief weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Mohammed ElBaradei told the United Nations that some real disarmament had been achieved.

France on Friday called for a summit of the leaders of the 15 Security Council nations to find a compromise on Iraq.

The United States rejected that idea, but Chirac was calling other leaders, seeking their support, his office said Saturday. Chirac had received a positive response, his office said, without elaborating or mentioning which leaders the French president had consulted.

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov warned the United States Saturday that unilateral military action would violate the U.N. charter.

"If the United States unilaterally begins military action in relation to Iraq, it would violate the U.N. Charter and, of course, when the U.N. Charter is violated, the Security Council must gather, discuss the situation and make the corresponding decisions," Ivanov said.

U.S. and British diplomats still hope Moscow will abstain in the vote rather than risk a diplomatic break with Washington.

Japan backed the resolution Saturday, urging the Security Council to pass it. While Japan is not on the council, it is a major source of foreign aid - an important consideration for the poor nations on the body.

Emboldened by the latest weapons inspectors' report, Iraq on Saturday called on the United Nations to remove crippling sanctions and ban weapons of mass destruction in the entire Middle East - and eventually in the United States.

Iraq resumed destroying banned Al Samoud 2 missiles under U.N. supervision Saturday after taking a day off, crushing six more in a process that chief inspector Hans Blix called a "substantial measure of disarmament."

In the past week, Iraq has destroyed 40 of its estimated 100 Al Samoud 2 missiles, prohibited by the United Nations because some tests indicated they could fly farther than a U.N.-imposed limit of 93 miles. It also has been destroying equipment used to make them.

Reports to the Security Council on Friday by Blix and ElBaradei praised Iraq's recent compliance.

But Blix also documented lingering questions about Iraqi weapons program in a 173-page dossier, which said Baghdad may still possess about 10,000 liters of anthrax, Scud missile warheads and drones capable of flying far beyond a 93-mile limit.

Iraq, however, claimed to take the inspectors' report as an endorsement of its work and argued not only that war plans should be canceled, but that sanctions imposed on it by the Security Council for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait should be removed.

"We demand that the Security Council and the world decide on ... the lifting of sanctions on Iraq in a comprehensive and complete way," said a spokesman for a meeting Saturday of Saddam and top-level officials, quoted by official Iraqi news media.

The spokesman claimed the weapons inspectors had verified Iraq has rid itself of weapons of mass destruction - something the inspectors said would take months to do - and appealed for a ban on such weapons to be extended beyond Iraq: to Israel, and eventually to the United States.

The spokesman, reporting on the meeting, said Iraq called on the Security Council "to rid the Middle East of weapons of mass destruction since Iraq has become free of them."

But CBS News correspondent Lara Logan reports that around the capital, there were signs the Iraqi leadership wasn't quite as confident as it appeared to be in public. Uniformed soldiers were seen for the first time defending road junctions in Baghdad, Logan says. And more sandbagged fighting positions and foxholes appeared in the city's streets.

Also in Iraq, where U.S. and British aircraft are enforcing northern and southern flight-interdiction zones established after the 1991 Gulf War, fighters over the southern zone struck for a second consecutive day Saturday against mobile surface-to-air missile guidance radar systems.

The U.S. Central Command said both strikes used precision-guided weapons after "in response to Iraqi threats to coalition aircraft."

Separately, Israeli media reported Saturday that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon met CIA Director George Tenet last week as part of US-Israeli coordination ahead of an anticipated U.S. military offensive in Iraq.

The two met in Israel as part of a tour of the region by Tenet to prepare for a strike, Israeli TV and the Haaretz newspaper Web site reported.

Sharon also met several times in the past year with Jordan's King Abdullah II, the last time three months ago, to clarify each leader's position in regards to a U.S. campaign in Iraq, Channel Two TV reported.

The two men also discussed Sharon's plans for relations with the Palestinians in the aftermath of a U.S. war with Iraq. Sharon and Abdullah met in Jordan each time, the TV said.

Sharon's spokesman, Raanan Gissin, would not comment on any of the news reports.