| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Jan 11, 2003 9:30 am Post subject: Allies Slow U.S. War Plans |
| http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40551-2003Jan10.html
washingtonpost.com Allies Slow U.S. War Plans
British and French Urge Time for Inspectors; Turkey Delays on Troops By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 11, 2003; Page A01 Over the past week, key U.S. allies have sent an unambiguous message to the Bush administration to give United Nations weapons inspectors in Iraq time to complete their work, even if it means delaying the onset of hostilities.
The allied opposition to an early war with Iraq has strengthened the hand of moderates in the administration who have been arguing against setting a firm deadline for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to comply with demands for giving up his weapons of mass destruction, according to U.S. officials and allied diplomats. According to these sources, the odds of a February war appear to be receding, barring a major Iraqi misstep that would galvanize Western governments and public opinion.
"The odds have gone down for war," said a well-placed U.S. official. "We don't have a good war plan; the inspectors have unprecedented access to Iraq; we have just started giving them intelligence; we have to give them more time to see how this works. There is no reason to stop the process until it can't proceed any further."
The apparent relaxation in administration rhetoric contrasts with statements by President Bush late last year advocating a "zero tolerance" policy toward Hussein. After weeks of insisting that U.S. forces were poised to intervene in Iraq if Hussein failed to properly account for his weapons of mass destruction, administration spokesmen are now echoing their European counterparts, and saying the inspectors should be given time to do their work.
Before this week, it appeared that the administration was intent on orchestrating a final confrontation with Baghdad soon after Jan. 27, when chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix is due to report back to the Security Council on Iraqi compliance with international demands for the nation's disarmament. This coincided with a major U.S. military buildup in the Persian Gulf region -- putting maximum pressure on Hussein and providing Bush with a credible military option to back up his threats of "regime change."
All of a sudden, this timetable seems in doubt. Not only are key allies such as Britain and France publicly calling for the United Nations to come up with clear-cut evidence of Iraqi wrongdoing, the military preparations for an attack on Iraq have encountered a hitch because of delays by Turkey in agreeing to the two-front North-South war plan developed by the Pentagon.
Although many administration officials believe that Turkey will eventually go along with "urgent" U.S. requests to station as many as 80,000 troops in the country in preparation for an attack on northern Iraq, it could take weeks to conclude the negotiations and move the troops into position. The lack of a definite response from Ankara has confronted the Bush administration with the difficult choice of delaying the war or abandoning plans for a northern front, which could mean higher U.S. casualties.
On the diplomatic front, some of the strongest words of caution have come from Britain, which until now has played the role of Washington's staunchest ally in the gathering showdown with Baghdad. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is coming under increasing pressure from his own Labor Party to distance himself from Bush, told the British cabinet on Thursday that the weapons inspectors should be given "time and space" to finish their work.
Blair said that the Jan. 27 date for Blix's report to the Security Council was "an important staging post," but "shouldn't be regarded in any sense as a deadline," according to British officials.
Both Britain and France want the United States to return to the Security Council for another resolution to endorse the use of military force against Hussein and to formally declare Iraq to be in "material breach" of its disarmament obligations. In order to get such a resolution through the Security Council, allied diplomats say it will probably be necessary for Blix to submit an unambiguous report accusing Baghdad of continuing its weapons of mass destruction programs.
In an interim report to the Security Council on Thursday, Blix criticized Iraq for failing to provide full information on its weapons programs, but said inspectors needed more time to compile an accurate picture. He added that his inspectors had so far failed to find "a smoking gun" demonstrating Iraqi noncompliance.
French President Jacques Chirac underlined his insistence on the need for explicit U.N. endorsement of the use of force against Iraq at a meeting with foreign ambassadors earlier this week. He told the diplomats that any decision on military action could only be taken by the Security Council "on a basis of a report from the inspectors." As a permanent member of the council -- along with the United States, Britain, China and Russia -- France is in a position to veto Security Council decisions.
Both U.S. officials and allied diplomats said the public signals from London and Paris urging Washington to give the inspectors more time have been reinforced in private conversations at all levels. In an interview this week, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said he was well aware of the domestic pressures on Blair, who has been accused by left-wing British newspaper commentators of being "Bush's poodle."
"My job as secretary of state . . . is to listen to our friends and see if we can find a way to accommodate the positions they bring to us," Powell said. "Prime Minister Blair and [British Foreign Secretary Jack] Straw are never shrinking violets when it comes to laying forth the position of her majesty's government. And we're trying to listen. To characterize Prime Minister Blair as a poodle is an absolutely absurd and silly charge."
As for the problem posed by the Turkish government's delay in approving the stationing of U.S. ground troops along the northern border of Iraq, Powell said, "The Turks are receptive to all the requests we've put before them in the sense that they have not yet said no to anything." He noted that a new Turkish parliament is dominated by a moderate Islamic party that has yet to fully sort out its policies toward the United States. According to polls, an overwhelming majority of Turks are opposed to joining a U.S.-led war against Iraq.
The Turkish leaders "are dealing with public opinion; they are dealing with a new government; they are dealing with a new parliament and a gentleman who is not yet quite prime minister," Powell said. "And so they have to move at their own pace."
Powell said that Turkish leaders had indicated to him that it would be easier to respond to the U.S. requests if there were an "international consensus" on dealing with Iraq, in the form of a second Security Council resolution. As the only NATO country bordering Iraq, Turkey is key to U.S. plans to a two-front war.
Turkish officials said they have agreed in principle to U.S. requests for overflight rights, and the use of Turkish seaports and air bases. But opening the country to tens of thousands of U.S. troops poses a more delicate problem, as the Turkish constitution requires parliamentary approval for the stationing of foreign troops.
Staff writer Glenn Kessler contributed to this report. | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Jan 11, 2003 9:33 am Post subject: Opposition to War Growing in France |
| washingtonpost.com Opposition to War Growing in France
By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, January 11, 2003; Page A15 PARIS, Jan. 10 -- As President Jacques Chirac attempts to prepare the French public for possible war with Iraq, opinion polls show strong opposition to a conflict and growing disquiet among members of Chirac's political grouping in parliament.War opponents have become more vocal in recent days, after Chirac this week told the military to be prepared for a possible conflict. This suggests the president faces a difficult task in winning backing for any war that France, as a U.N. Security Council member and strong U.S. ally, would be likely to join.A poll Thursday by the Ipsos organization for the newspaper Le Figaro found 77 percent of those interviewed opposed to military intervention against Iraq. The poll found that anti-war sentiment largely spanned the political spectrum, from people on the far left, who are most opposed, to people on the far right.The poll mirrors other recent surveys, including one by the CSA polling group released Wednesday in the newspaper Le Parisian, which found 66 percent of the respondents opposed to a war and 24 percent in favor. A CSA poll in August found 58 percent opposed to military intervention, so the latest numbers suggest anti-war sentiment may be hardening.Political leaders have also been voicing skepticism about the Bush administration's sincerity in allowing U.N. inspectors to try to peacefully disarm Iraq. Some 85 members of parliament, including members of Chirac's Union for a Presidential Majority, last month signed an anti-war petition.Chirac on Tuesday called for a parliamentary debate and promised the legislature would participate "at every step of the evolution of this crisis."Leftist members of parliament, led by the Socialists, the largest bloc on the left, seized on Chirac's comments to say the president had already decided to go to war. In a television interview, Socialist Party leader Francois Hollande decried what he called "a shift" in Chirac's position to a more pro-war stance and said the Socialist position is "not to prepare for a war, but to prevent it." Members of the Communist Party and Greens have been even more critical.Anti-war sentiment within Chirac's center-right camp "is going to make it difficult for him," said Philip H. Gordon, a France expert and senior fellow with the Brookings Institution in Washington.If there is a U.S.-led military intervention, analysts here and in Washington said, France is certain to participate to maintain its international standing as a military power as well as to have a voice in postwar reconstruction. But the domestic climate is almost solidly anti-war, deeply suspicious of U.S. intentions in the Persian Gulf region and highly concerned about the likely spillover effects, including an explosion of refugees and an outburst of anger among the estimated 5 million to 6 million Muslims who live here."Partly out of ignorance, partly out of anti-Americanism, partly out of fear of the consequences of a war in France for relations between the various communities, the French are acting the way they are," said Dominique Moisi, a political scientist with the French International Relations Institute. "But in the last few days you've seen Chirac starting to prepare the French for war."The official French position is that the U.N. inspections should be given a chance to work, that use of force to disarm the Iraqi government should be a last resort and that military action must be authorized by the U.N. Security Council.France on Wednesday also called on the United States, Britain and any other countries accusing Iraq of having undeclared weapons of mass destruction to show its proof to the inspectors, saying in a letter to the 15 permanent and non-permanent Security Council members that "all available information should be immediately transmitted to them."Commenting on the seemingly solid domestic opposition to war, some analysts noted anti-war sentiment was equally high in January 1991, just before the start of the Persian Gulf War. But after the initiation of hostilities, the opinion shifted, with 67 percent of French backing the military campaign. | | | | Alpha | | | | Anglo Thug | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Jan 11, 2003 12:53 pm Post subject: The gathering storm recedes |
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Excellent article... Thanks for posting it...!
Here is another one:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=367945
War on Iraq: The gathering storm recedes
By Andrew Grice Political Editor and David Usborne in New York
10 January 2003Tony Blair put a brake on the drive towards war with Iraq yesterday by saying the United Nations weapons inspectors should be given more "time and space" to finish their work.
He gave his assessment after the United Nations said bluntly that six weeks of searching for weapons of mass destruction by its inspectors in Iraq had failed to find any incriminating evidence or come up with any "smoking gun" that might point to illegal concealment.
After months of raising the prospect of military action against Saddam Hussein's regime, the Prime Minister deliberately played down the prospect of an imminent attack on Iraq despite the build-up of United States and British forces in the Gulf.
Mr Blair told the Cabinet's weekly meeting that the 27 January date on which Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, will report to the UN was "an important staging post" but "shouldn't be regarded in any sense as a deadline".
The Prime Minister's remarks will be seen as a warning to Washington that he would not necessarily support a war in Iraq in all circumstances. Despite his determination to stand "shoulder to shoulder" with President George Bush, Mr Blair is anxious to avoid what Whitehall calls the "nightmare scenario" of having to decide whether to back unilateral action by America. He has refused to speculate on which way he would jump if that happened.
With no breakthrough by the arms inspectors, the anti-war mood on the Labour benches has hardened since MPs returned from their holiday break on Tuesday.
And clear divisions appear to be opening between the two allies as the Bush administration reacted harshly to the Blix assessment. Washington insisted Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction and that its opinion would not be altered, regardless of what UN weapons inspectors did or did not find.
Mr Blair's assessment of the situation is increasingly in line with that of Mr Blix, and his counterpart at the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed al-Baradei. The inspectors' statement yesterday stood in sharp contrast to renewed claims by the US that Iraq does have armaments prohibited by UN resolutions.
President Bush's spokes-man, Ari Fleischer, said: " We know for a fact that there are weapons there." But he too appeared keen to play down the significance of 27 January, when the inspectors are to present their first formal report on their inspections.
He said Mr Bush had "set no deadline" and, echoing the Prime Minister, said he believed it was important the inspectors had time to do their work. Asked about the absence of a "smoking gun", Mr Fleischer said: "The problem with guns that are hidden is you can't see their smoke. So we will still wait to see what the inspectors find in Iraq and what events in Iraq lead to. We know for a fact that there are weapons there."
Mr Blix told the Security Council he was "not satisfied" with the 12,000-page declaration provided by Iraq on its weapons programmes and he will continue to press Baghdad to address important unanswered questions while the inspections are intensified. After the briefing he said: "We have been there for two months, covering the country in ever-wider sweeps, and we haven't found any smoking guns."
Senior British ministers said last night that Mr Blair's remarks were aimed at three different audiences: the Bush administration, countries wary about military action and the Labour Party.
Mr Blair is worried that war without clear evidence that President Saddam has weapons of mass destruction would be opposed by several European Union countries and key Middle East nations such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia. He would prefer action to be authorised by a second UN resolution, but there is no prospect of that until evidence about weapons emerges or the inspectors' work is thwarted.
The Prime Minister has also been warned by leaders of Labour backbenchers that he would face the biggest rebellion since becoming leader if he backed a war in the short term.One senior Labour MP said: "It would be a different matter if we get the evidence and UN authority for action."Downing Street also denied Mr Blair was "going soft" over military action, and said London had not urged Washington to delay a war until the autumn.
Mr Blair's official spokesman said: "We are in the middle of a process. The UN inspectors have just, at the beginning of the year, got their full complement of inspectors there." | | | | Guest | | Posted: Sat Jan 11, 2003 2:49 pm Post subject: US plans are slowed??? |
| 35,000 more headed to gulf
Orders for big deployment going out soon, officials say
NBC, MSNBC AND NEWS SERVICES
Jan. 10 — Orders were expected to go out as soon as Friday night to deploy 35,000 more troops to join U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf region, defense officials told NBC News. They are among tens of thousands of Army, Marine, Navy and Air Force personnel being dispatched over the next few weeks in a surge that will more than double the 65,000-strong U.S. military contingent in the region.
THE NEW FORCES include two amphibious task forces comprising 13,000 to 14,000 Marines aboard about 14 ships. Orders for those Marines — about 7,000 from Camp Lejeune, N.C., and 6,000 from Camp Pendleton, Calif. — had already been received earlier in the day, officials said.
The new deployments also will include about 1,000 troops from the the Army’s largest fighting organization, the XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg, N.C., defense officials told NBC News, as well as an undisclosed number of Patriot anti-missile batteries.
The Lejeune Marines were leaving Norfolk, Va., on Friday as part of a task force that includes infantry, tanks, amphibious vehicles, supply specialists and aircraft.
More than 1,000 Marines from the base are already in the gulf region, including a 500-person task force off the coast of northeastern Africa. Another contingent of 400 Marines whose job is to unload supply ships left Wednesday aboard airplanes.
Seven San Diego-based amphibious ships were to carry the 6,000 Marines from Camp Pendleton to the gulf, The San Diego Union-Tribute reported. The ships reportedly were loaded with tanks, artillery and ammunition.
In all, 65,000 to 75,000 Marines would deploy to the gulf region if war broke out, the Marine Corps commandant, Gen. Jim Jones, said Wednesday.
HEAVY EQUIPMENT SHIPPED
The massive infusion of new personnel added to a military deployment campaign that has accelerated in the past week as a Jan. 27 deadline approaches for chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix to report to the Security Council on the progress of U.N. teams that have been in Iraq since late November searching for evidence of weapons of mass destruction.
Defense sources said no decision on whether the United States would go to war with Iraq would be made before Jan. 27.
The ground forces approved so far are far short of the more than 250,000 U.S. troops sent to the region for the 1991 Gulf War. But defense sources told NBC News that 200,000 U.S. troops could surround Iraq by mid-February.
Deployments Thursday included U.S. troops in Germany who loaded 500 camouflaged Army tractors, bulldozers, trucks and other heavy vehicles needed to build camps, roads and other facilities onto 250 flatbed railcars in the eastern Bavarian town of Vilseck, where the U.S. Army has a base.
About 700 troops from the 94th Engineer Combat Battalion will join the equipment in Kuwait over the next few weeks. The engineers are the first U.S. troops to head for the gulf from among 70,000 based in Germany.
U.S. military officials in Germany expect many more troops to get their marching orders in coming weeks. Two divisions with more than 10,000 soldiers based in Germany took part in the 1991 Gulf War.
PLANNERS HEAD TO QATAR
Back in the United States, defense officials said this week that U.S. Central Command, which would run any military operation, was moving senior war planners from headquarters in Tampa, Fla., to a base in the Persian Gulf nation Qatar.
“The bulk of those that would need to be in place to make the [Qatar] headquarters operational will be there by the end of the month,” a U.S. defense official said as the head of Central Command, Army Gen. Tommy Franks, briefed President Bush on war preparations Wednesday. “I’m not telling you it will be operational.”
The Qatar base is known as Camp As Sayliyah, a desert encampment with newly designed command posts hidden inside enormous warehouses near the capital, Doha.
If there is a war, Franks would run it from As Sayliyah, but he is not returning immediately, officials said.
B-1 BOMBERS
Several B-1 bombers also left Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D., this week. About 500 Ellsworth troops and 450 tons of cargo also were heading out.
B-1 bombers like this one were used regularly during the war in Afghanistan.
NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski reported that the B-1 bombers were headed for the gulf region. Capable of flying high over and deep into Iraq, each of the $300 million bombers can carry two dozen large bombs on a single mission. B-1s were used regularly during the war in Afghanistan to pound al-Qaida and Taliban positions while remaining out of range of ground fire.
NBC News has learned that eight to 10 B-1 bombers will probably be stationed in Oman, where the United States has been given access to air bases.
MORE ARMY MOVEMENTS
Thousands more Army troops from Fort Benning, Ga., have also been deploying this week. About 350 soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division left Tuesday for training exercises in Kuwait. The base is expected to see four daily deployments over the next few weeks as 11,000 troops ship out, joining 4,800 other division troops already in Kuwait.
The Army said Monday that it had alerted more than 10,000 reservists to prepare for active duty as early as this week to support a U.S. military buildup near Iraq. | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Guest | | Posted: Sun Jan 12, 2003 3:12 pm Post subject: |
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