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“Pressure works. We’re going to keep it up.”
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WASHINGTON,
October 2 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – The United States
rejected Tuesday, October 1, the return of U.N. weapons inspectors to
Iraq until the U.N. Security Council passes a tough new resolution
spelling out conditions and demanding Iraq disarm.
“We
do not believe that they should go back in under the old set of
resolutions and under the old inspection regime and therefore we do
not believe that they should go in until they have new instructions in
the form of a new resolution,” said Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Meanwhile,
the Bush administration suggested an assassination of Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein Tuesday, saying it would be cheaper if the Iraqi leader
were assassinated or went into exile, Xinhua News Agency reported.
Asked
about a Congressional Budget Office estimate that deploying troops to
Iraq could cost more than $9 billion a month, White House spokesman
Ari Fleischer said: “I can only say that the cost of a one-way
ticket is substantially less than that. The cost of one bullet, the
Iraqi people taking it on themselves, is substantially less than
that.”
But
the spokesman later said he was only making a rhetorical point by
saying that as U.S. law bars assassinating foreign leaders.
Powell
stopped short of repeating his statement of last week, that the United
States would thwart the inspectors’ return until a new resolution
had been adopted. He left that to a senior State Department official
to reiterate, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
But
Powell made clear that an agreement reached earlier Tuesday between
Hans Blix, the head of the U.N. inspections agency UNMOVIC, and Iraq
that relies on the authority and instructions of existing resolutions,
was unacceptable.
“Our
position is right now that UNMOVIC cannot go back in under the former
terms of reference,” Powell said at a hastily arranged news briefing
at the State Department.
He
called on members of the U.N. Security Council, who are now struggling
to breach deep differences over tough new language on Iraq, to act
speedily to adopt a new resolution.
“I
am convinced a new resolution is appropriate, with tough consequences,
so we are not out here a year from now talking about this all over
again,” Powell said.
“Pressure
works. We’re going to keep it up.”
In
Vienna, Blix said after two days of talks with Iraqi officials that
the inspectors would have access to all sites in Iraq, but there were
restrictions on entering eight “presidential sites.”
Iraqi
delegation chief Amir El-Sadi said he expected U.N. weapons inspectors
in Baghdad within two weeks.
Blix,
scheduled to report on the talks to the Security Council in New York
on Thursday, said he hoped inspectors would arrive “about the middle
of October.”
Powell
sought to downplay suggestions that the United States might be
prepared to compromise and accept two resolutions to accommodate
France, which is insisting on a dual track - one resolution demanding
compliance, and a second, if needed, on a military option.
But
Powell refused to rule out the possibility of concession to head off a
French veto of the U.S.-British “one-resolution solution.”
The
five permanent council members - Britain, China, France, Russia and
the United States - each has an absolute veto on the council.
“We’re
pressing forward on a one-resolution solution,” Powell said.
“We
think it’s best, we think we’ve got a convincing case of that and
so do our United Kingdom colleagues. Other nations have a different
point of view, that’s why you have consultations, that's why you
have a negotiation.”
“We
want to hear those points of view and we want to see what can be
achieved and we will see which argument prevails,” Powell said.
The
United States accuses Iraq of developing nuclear, chemical and
biological weapons.
As
part of a deal that ended the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq agreed to submit to
U.N. arms inspections, but they were interrupted in 1998 ahead of
U.S.-British air strikes.
Meanwhile,
U.S. lawmakers said after meeting Bush they hoped Wednesday, October
2, to unveil a compromise resolution authorizing him to use force
against Iraq and vote on it within a week.
“We’re
very close to agreed-upon language. We think that we should do this
quickly, within the next week,” said Representative Howard Berman,
an opposition Democrat.
