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Congress Close to Authorizing Force Against Iraq

The resolution is "an unprecedented and unfounded interpretation of the president's authority under the Constitution," said Democratic Senator Robert Byrd

WASHINGTON, October 4 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – U.S. lawmakers moved Thursday, October 3, toward authorizing President George W. Bush to use force against Baghdad, with a House of Representatives committee endorsing a compromise resolution and senators setting terms for debate.

The House International Relations Committee approved the final wording of a resolution by a 31-11 while the Senate voted 95-1 to open preliminary debate on the proposal, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

The votes came as U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell consulted with Russia and other countries on the economic and political ramifications of launching war on Iraq.

Capitol Hill seems poised for a protracted debate, with Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle seeming to dig his heels in for a long haul, saying he felt further refinements could be made to the resolution, while Republican Minority Leader Trent Lott appeared eager to move on.

"I am still confident that at the end of the day we're going to be able to develop a broad, bipartisan consensus about this authorization, ... but we're just starting this progress," Daschle said, quoted by AFP.

Meanwhile, House committee members debated the final wording of the resolution to be put to the House and later to the Democratic-controlled Senate, where the White House faces greater resistance.

Bush and congressional leaders agreed Wednesday, October 2, on a resolution that would authorize Bush to "use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines necessary and appropriate" to launch a strike against the 12-year-sanction-hit country.

"The president is pleased that the resolution gives him the ‘tools he needs’" to launch war on Iraq "and that it does so in a way that does not tie his hands," Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters.

The measure also required Bush to assure Congress that "diplomacy has been exhausted" and to notify it "not later" than 48 hours after attacking Iraq.

But the resolution, which is expected to go to a full vote in both houses next week, has opponents.

"The resolution before us today is not only a product of haste; it is also a product of presidential hubris," said Democratic Senator Robert Byrd.

The resolution is "an unprecedented and unfounded interpretation of the president's authority under the Constitution, not to mention the fact that it stands the charter of the United Nations on its head."

Republican Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, however, put the onus on the world body and said the Senate should move forward.

"If the United Nations is to be a force for peace, it must show that it stands ready to meet this ongoing threat to the international community," he said.

"If it does not, it too will be consigned to the ash heap of history, as the League of Nations was before it."

The United States, which has been urging the U.N. to act against Iraq, has presented the world body with a highly controversial resolution drafted with Britain, revealing the U.S. intention to use U.N. weapons inspections as a possible first step towards a military occupation of Iraq by sending in troops, sealing off “exclusion zones” and creating secure corridors throughout the country.

"The resolution would place a full-scale invasion of Iraq on a hair trigger, authorizing U.N. member states ‘to use all necessary means to restore international peace and security” if Iraq does so much as make an omission in the weapons inventories it presents to the Security Council," the British daily newspaper, the Guardian, reported.

John Pike, the head of GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington military think tank, said the resolution was worded in such a way that Iraq was almost certain to reject it, even if the alternative was invasion.

"I could never imagine Iraq agreeing to this. If you’re going to be invaded you might as well make the invading force shoot their way in. It’s the sort of proposal meant to be rejected, " Pike said.

British experts worked alongside their U.S. counterparts at the state department in the early stages of its drafting, but it was then handed to the White House and the Pentagon, who added some of its tougher elements, the daily said.

It was clear that London was uneasy with some items in the draft, particularly the use of troops to quarantine suspect sites and to guard the inspectors’ routes to the sites. One British official pointed out that it was put within square brackets and could be jettisoned later, it added.

Further anxiety about the U.S. position came from Chris Patten, the E.U.’s commissioner for external relations.

"If the U.S. were to fall prey to the temptation to act alone and outside the framework of international order, even for the best of motives, it would be setting off down a very dangerous path. "

Diplomats in New York and Washington said it was clear there was a split between the state department and the Bush administration’s hawks over how far the U.S. should compromise, particularly over the threat of force.