US and Britain abandon diplomacy, Bush will demand Saddam leave

7.45am

WASHINGTON - US President George W. Bush will give Iraqi President Saddam Hussein a final ultimatum today to go into exile or face attack by 280,000 troops poised for war in the Gulf region.

Iraq has already rejected this demand, saying 'warmonger number one in the world' Bush should be the one to leave office. This move was one of a number of significant developments overnight, including the United States, Britain and Spain abandoning efforts to get international endorsement for war and UN officials arranging to withdraw staff from Iraq.

In Britain Prime Minister Tony Blair suffered a setback when Robin Cook, the British government's leader in parliament and a highly respected former foreign secretary, resigned in protest at Blair's hawkish stance on Iraq.

Bush will explain his decision to abandon diplomacy in an address to the American people at 8pm (1pm NZT) after the UN Security Council failed to reach a consensus on how to deal with Baghdad and its alleged weapons of mass destruction. Congressional leaders will be briefed in advance.

"He will say that to avoid military conflict, Saddam Hussein must leave the country," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. "The next move will be up to Saddam Hussein."

US officials said Bush would give Saddam and his immediate family as little as 48 hours to depart, but most believe that highly unlikely.

Iraq's Foreign Minister Naji Sabri told reporters that "any child" in Iraq knew Bush's ultimatum was a nonstarter.

The demand will also serve as a warning for inspectors, journalists, diplomats and others to get out.

"Baghdad is not a safe place to be," Fleischer said.

The United States has about 235,000 troops and Britain about 45,000 in the Gulf. General Tommy Franks, the man who would lead American forces against Iraq, has said they are ready to go whenever Bush gives the order.


"The diplomatic window in terms of passage of a UN resolution has come and gone," Fleischer told reporters. "The United Nations failed to act."

The president would be expected to give another speech once a conflict began, US officials said.

This is the first time the United States would go to war under a national security strategy, announced last year, that asserts Washington has the right to launch pre-emptive strikes on countries deemed a threat even before the United States itself is attacked.

The new doctrine, a sharp break with US history, also says the United States will not allow anyone to challenge its military supremacy.

Bush, Blair and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, during a crisis summit in the Azores on Sunday, had agreed to give diplomacy one more day. Bush spoke to both Blair and Aznar today.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell said in addition to Saddam, his immediate family members and unspecified others must depart as well. "And if somebody in Baghdad wishes to know the names, I'm sure we can be able to provide them," he said.

Bush "clearly will issue an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein that the only way to avoid the serious consequences that were built into (resolution) 1441 is for Saddam Hussein and his immediate cohorts to leave the country and to allow this matter to be resolved through the peaceful entry of force and not conflict," Powell said.

He said the decision to withdraw the resolution came after a number of diplomatic contacts. He spoke to the main US opponents in the Security Council, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov.

Ivanov said current UN Security Council resolutions gave no one any legal right to launch an attack on Iraq. A senior White House official said, "Any actions to enforce resolution 1441 would be justified and legal under existing Security Council resolutions including 1441, 687 and 678."

Bush has vowed to go to war to disarm Iraq of suspected weapons of mass destruction with or without UN approval. Baghdad denies it has any banned arms.

There was never much chance of an agreement in the bitterly divided Security Council, with the United States, Britain and Spain far apart from France and Russia, which wanted to give weapons inspectors more time and vowed to veto any UN resolution that could be seen as authorising war.

Powell blamed French intransigence. "Everybody pretty much accepted this resolution was not going to be a successful one, because there was one nation, France, that had indicated that it would veto under any set of circumstances," he said.

Britain's UN ambassador, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, also put the blame on France for threatening to veto the measure.

"The co-sponsors will not pursue a vote on the draft resolution," Greenstock told reporters.

John Negroponte, the US ambassador to the United Nations, said, "We believe that the vote would have been close. We regret that in the face of an explicit threat to veto by a permanent member, the vote counting became a secondary consideration."

But France immediately said the resolution was withdrawn because the sponsors did not even have the minimum nine votes needed for adoption.

"The co-sponsors made some bilateral consultation last night and this morning and the result is that the majority of the council confirmed that they do not want to authorise the use of force," France's UN ambassador Jean-Marc Sabliere said.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq