US President George W. Bush (left) with British Prime Minister Tony Blair (centre) and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar during a press briefing after their meeting at Lajes Field in the Azores yesterday. The meeting was portrayed by the White House as a final diplomatic push for a UN resolution demanding that Iraq disarm or face attack. LAJES AIRBASE, Azores, (Reuters):
UNITED STATES President George W. Bush said yesterday the United Nations has only one more day to find a diplomatic end to the Iraq crisis before the United States moves to a war footing.
"We concluded that tomorrow is a moment of truth for the world," Bush said after an emergency summit with the leaders of Britain, Spain and Portugal on the wind-swept Azores Islands in the eastern Atlantic.
Bush said the UN Security Council must agree on Monday on a new resolution authorising war against Iraq.
He left no doubt that the United States and its like-minded allies would otherwise move to invade Iraq without UN backing.
"Tomorrow's the day that we will determine whether or not diplomacy can work," Bush said.
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein vowed that his country would fight back "anywhere in the world" if invaded.
"When the enemy opens the war on a large scale, it should realise that the battle between us will be waged wherever there is sky, earth and water anywhere in the world," he said in comments reported by the state news agency only minutes after Bush had finished speaking.
Bush, pursuing a global "war against terror" in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the United States, branded Saddam a sponsor of terrorism and again demanded that he surrender his alleged weapons of mass destruction or be disarmed by force.
Iraq denies possessing nuclear, chemical or biological arms.
Prime Ministers Jose Maria Aznar of Spain and Tony Blair of Britain said one final round of diplomatic contacts would be made on Monday, in a last-ditch effort to win agreement on an ultimatum for Saddam.
Diplomatic analysts said the leaders' statements sounded like the start of a countdown to war irrespective of whether agreement could be reached at the deeply divided United Nations.
"If I were an Iraqi, I would be waiting for the bombs to start falling any time from tomorrow night," said Rosemary Hollis of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London.
"The message Bush was sending to Saddam was, 'Forget it, we're coming to get you'," said British analyst Toby Dodge.
There seemed little chance of reaching agreement in the UN Security Council, where France and Russia want weapons inspectors to have more time and have vowed to veto any resolution that could be seen as authorising war.
Blair challenged UN members to make their mind up "overnight" on a second resolution over Iraq, but expressed little hope an 11th-hour consensus could be reached.
"It is difficult to know how we can resolve this," Blair told reporters on his plane back to London.
Bush appeared to be allowing diplomacy one more day in an attempt to give Blair and Aznar political cover to say all diplomatic options had been exhausted. Both face bitter opposition at home to war.
The three leaders were to make a flurry of phone calls to Security Council members in a last-ditch effort to seek an international consensus.
But US officials said the resolution could be withdrawn with no vote if it was headed for clear defeat at the United Nations.
WAR PREPARATIONS
US officials said the president was prepared to deliver a nationally televised address warning Americans of the coming war as early as Monday, serving Saddam a final ultimatum and giving humanitarian workers and journalists time to leave Iraq.
In Washington, US Vice President Dick Cheney told CBS' "Face the Nation" programme that a war would be quick: "I think it will go relatively quickly.... Weeks rather than months."
Bush said war could be avoided if Saddam would go into exile. "Saddam can leave the country, if he's interested in peace," he said.
But the Iraqi leader was bracing for invasion, 12 years after the first Gulf War which drove his occupying troops from Kuwait but left his grip on power intact. Earlier on Sunday he divided Iraq into four military districts under his command to prepare for attack by a quarter of a million US and British troops massed in the Gulf region.
Saddam again denied having banned weapons and called the United States "the unjust judge of the world."
In Kuwait, the staging ground for any assault on Iraq, a government official said he believed war would start within 10 days. Information Minister Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahd al-Sabah told a news conference: "I think war is quite near."
Jeremy Batstone, head of research at NatWest stockbrokers in London, said financial markets would brace for a mid-week assault on Iraq.
"The initial reaction in the market on Monday is that the oil price will go higher, we will see the dollar weaken, bond prices rise, and the equity markets will lose some of the strength that we saw over the course of Thursday and Friday, although volumes will be extremely thin," he said.
DIPLOMATIC MOVES
Bush, Blair and Aznar came to the Azores facing global anti-war protests and a failure thus far to attract nine votes on the 15-nation Security Council for a new resolution that could provide important moral backing for war, even if the French or Russians vetoed the measure.
"Maybe it's a small chance, a small possibility, but even if it's one in 1 million, it's always worthwhile fighting for a political solution," said Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Manuel Durao Barroso, the summit host.
Bush, Blair and Aznar showed little interest in signals from France that it could accept a 30-day or 60-day limit on UN weapons inspections. "Without a credible ultimatum authorising force in the event of non-compliance, then more discussion is just more delay," Blair said.
Bush specifically criticised the French for their veto threat.
"France showed their cards," he said. "So cards have been played. And we'll just have to take an assessment after tomorrow to determine what that card meant."
POST-SADDAM IRAQ
The summit leaders emphasised their comment to rebuild a post-Saddam Iraq, in comments that diplomatic analysts took as a further sign of the inevitability of war.
"I think it's amazing that Bush didn't actually mention the war. Instead he leapt straight to the need for reconstruction and the need for UN involvement in that," said British analyst Dodge.
The leaders said they were committed to the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel - addressing critics who have accused the United States of focusing on Iraq to the detriment of Middle East peace-making.
They released a separate statement calling for transatlantic unity, urging "our friends and allies to put aside differences and work together."
