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Bush tells un { September 13 2002 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10741-2002Sep12.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10741-2002Sep12.html
Bush Tells United Nations It Must Stand Up to Hussein, or U.S. Will
Top Advisers Press Body for Council Vote
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 13, 2002; Page A01
UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 12 -- President Bush challenged the United Nations today to stand up to Saddam Hussein, warning the world body that the United States is prepared to act alone if the Iraqi president fails to comply with U.N. resolutions demanding an end to his weapons development program.
The United States, Bush told representatives of nearly 200 nations gathered for the annual U.N. General Assembly, is ready to work with them "to meet our common challenge" of ending Iraq's defiance of 10 years of U.N. demands.
"But the purposes of the United States should not be doubted," Bush told hushed delegates in the cavernous assembly hall. Resolutions ordering Iraqi disarmament and other U.N. demands "will be enforced -- or action will be unavoidable," he said. "And a regime that has lost its legitimacy will also lose its power."
In delivering one of the most anticipated speeches of his presidency, Bush issued his most forceful case yet on the threat posed by Hussein and the need to confront him. Although he offered little new evidence to back up his assertions, the president outlined a litany of complaints against the Iraqi government, including human rights abuses, links to terror, and an ambitious program to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
Bush's remarks were aimed at audiences abroad and at home. While seeking to address concerns by governments around the world that he was poised to launch a unilateral military campaign to topple Hussein, Bush also tried to shore up support in Congress for a resolution backing the use of force against Iraq.
His address set in motion what could be an accelerated timetable for action. With administration officials pressing for a vote in Congress by November, senior Bush advisers today began negotiations on a new U.N. Security Council resolution on Iraq, possibly as early as next week.
Iraq immediately denounced Bush's address as "lies" and said it was a pretext for invasion. But the overwhelming reaction among delegates who immediately broke into conversation as Bush left the hall, whether they agreed with Bush's assessment of Hussein, was a sense of relief that the president had reaffirmed the legitimacy of the international body and that, for however brief a moment, the possibility of unilateral U.S. military action was off the table.
On Capitol Hill, reaction was largely favorable, and leaders of both parties said the president had helped bolster his case for a congressional resolution.
In his speech, Bush briefly reiterated his commitment to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and said the United States would rejoin UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization it left 18 years ago.
But he devoted most of his 20-minute address to Iraq, including a recitation of past U.N. resolutions ordering Baghdad to end its weapons programs, stop repressing its own people and to end threats against its neighbors and all support for terrorists. After a "decade of defiance," Bush said, the world was deceiving itself if it thought Hussein would suddenly decide on his own to comply.
"All the world now faces a test, and the United Nations a difficult and defining moment," he said. "Are Security Council resolutions to be honored and enforced, or cast aside without consequence? Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?"
In sweeping rhetoric and occasionally harsh tones, Bush reminded the General Assembly that the United Nations was founded after World War II to ensure that the world would "never again be destroyed by the will and wickedness of any man."
The danger posed by Hussein's pursuit of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and the possibility he could supply them to terrorists such as those responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush said, was "exactly the kind of aggressive threat the United Nations was born to confront."
Bush set no deadline for what he described as the Security Council's "urgent duty." But top administration officials outlined a rapid timetable for negotiations, beginning with a meeting that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell will hold Friday with his counterparts from Britain, Russia, France and China -- the five permanent members of the Security Council -- and Secretary General Kofi Annan.
Powell said in an interview after the speech that the administration expects one or more resolutions to be agreed to within "weeks and days," rather than months.
In agreeing to work through the Security Council, Powell said, Bush had given the international community "what it has been asking for" and expected a quick response. "We start discussions tomorrow and they'll take the weekend to report back to their capitals," Powell said. "Next week, we'll talk about specific language. . . . This is not something we want to see protracted, bogged down. We want to move quickly."
Although Powell and other officials said the administration was eager to hear all proposals and willing to seriously negotiate its own views, they expressed a clear preference for a single new resolution that would remind Iraq of its obligations under international law, spell out with great specificity how they will now be enforced, and at least indirectly authorize the immediate use of force if it does not comply.
French President Jacques Chirac proposed last week that the Security Council begin with one resolution setting a deadline for Hussein to readmit U.N. weapons inspectors, to be followed, if he does not comply, by subsequent discussion and a second resolution authorizing a response that could include multinational military action.
Powell said "my inclination is to get as much as we can in this one set of deliberations. That will be what I will go in trying to do. We want to try to get as much as we can," although he said the administration recognizes that "there are other people who will have their points of view."
Many governments and outside experts believe that U.N. inspectors operating in Iraq between 1991 and 1998 uncovered and dismantled most of Iraqi's weapons of mass destruction capability, despite Hussein's efforts to thwart them.
But the administration has long maintained that no inspections regime, no matter how harsh, would be effective in finding previously missed or new facilities or stored weapons. Asked whether its new willingness to consider proposals for a more rigorous system of inspections before deciding on military action meant it believed any inspections regime would work, a senior official said, "No."
Powell and other officials said they thought agreement on a new resolution could be reached as soon as the end of next week, although British diplomats and others sympathetic to the U.S. position said they believed it would take a number of weeks at a minimum. Most of those discussions, Powell said, would be held in New York. While Bush continues to make his case to world leaders, including a visit to Camp David this weekend by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Powell is expected to handle the bulk of the direct negotiations.
Remaining at the United Nations through Friday, Powell will return to Washington over the weekend and, along with national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, appear on Sunday television talk shows for the second week in a row to lay out the administration's views on Iraq. He is to return here Monday.
Top administration officials appeared confident that Bush's speech would squelch Capitol Hill calls to delay debate on Iraq until after the Nov. 5 elections. Bush has said he wants congressional authorization for action against Hussein before Congress leaves town early next month.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been Bush's strongest backer for tough action against Iraq, while counseling working through the United Nations. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw described Bush's speech as "powerful -- very effective."
A number of others echoed the words of Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik in expressing more enthusiasm for the fact that Bush had come to the United Nations to make the case than necessarily agreeing with all of what the president said or any specific course of future action.
"What was positive in his speech is that future action is rooted in the United Nations," Bondevik said. "I felt his speech today was multilateral, more than I have heard from the United States in other speeches."
French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said: "We know there is a great temptation toward unilateral action," and said that, while Paris has its own ideas about how new Security Council action should unfold -- implying that France might be ready to present its own resolution as early as the meeting with Powell on Friday -- Bush's broad outline was "compatible with the French approach."
Russia and China, which have both publicly opposed military action in Iraq, remained silent. In Germany, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder repeated that he was opposed to military action under virtually any circumstances.
A senior Arab diplomat whose government fears any military action in Iraq will destabilize the region and set back a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict said glumly that U.S. negotiations within the Security Council wouldn't really change much.
"What [Bush] is trying to do is to get more support from the international community. But the fundamentals are not affected in any way. It's only a matter of seeking support from the Security Council" for the military action it ultimately expects to carry out, he said.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
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