Reminding European leaders how the United States defended their nations in wars past, President Bush insisted Wednesday that Europe now has an obligation in the war on terrorism to join the U.S. in defending against the threat posed by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
And as the Dec. 8 deadline nears for Hussein to declare what weapons of mass destruction his nation possesses, Bush warned him that he would be “entering his final stage with a lie” if he continues to claim he has no such arsenal.
Speaking on the eve of a two-day NATO summit, Bush said that war with Iraq remains a last resort and that he hopes the country will disarm voluntarily. But even as he spoke, U.S. officials were sending letters to 50 nations asking what contribution they could make if military action is necessary.
“The world needs the nations of this continent to be active in the defense of freedom, not inward-looking or isolated by indifference,” Bush said in a speech before the Prague Atlantic Student Summit.
“Ignoring dangers or excusing aggression may temporarily avert conflict, but they don’t bring true peace,” he added. “International stability must be actively defended, and all nations that benefit from that stability have a duty to help.”
Bush has already won the backing of the United Nations for a resolution demanding that Iraq disarm or face “serious consequences.” But the president still faces the prospect that, should war be necessary, it would be fought almost exclusively by U.S. and British forces.
Except for Britain, European leaders do not share Bush’s sense of urgency about Hussein’s buildup of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and they appeared unmoved by Bush’s attempts to respond to some of their concerns.
To appease allies, Bush halted his talk about the need for “regime change” in Iraq and the desirability of a pre-emptive military strike. He also sought the blessing of the international community through the UN Security Council. Still, he has made little apparent progress in persuading other nations to join what he calls a “coalition of the willing,” even as the deadline nears for deciding whether military action is needed.
Bush’s peace-through-strength approach to Iraq has made many war-wary U.S. allies uneasy. But the president insists that the only way to keep the current situation from deteriorating into armed conflict is to convince Hussein that the world is serious about enforcing the UN resolution that was approved Nov. 8.
Maintaining that posture, Bush issued the warning to Iraq that the U.S. is already aware of banned weapons sites and that Hussein’s blanket denials about the existence of such weapons will no longer be tolerated. The UN measure gives Iraq until Dec. 8 to provide a list.
“Should he again deny that this arsenal exists, he will have entered his final stage with a lie,” Bush said. “And deception this time will not be tolerated. Delay and defiance will invite the severest of consequences.”
Bush did not specify whether Hussein’s failure to acknowledge the weapons programs would be enough to trigger military action. White House aides later declined to elaborate on Bush’s intentions, saying questions about how the U.S. might react to Hussein’s continued defiance were strictly hypothetical.
Bush “put the regime on notice that we’re not playing the same games we played for the past decade,” White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett said. “There are a lot of scenarios that can happen . . . There can be full defiance, there can be partial defiance.”
But Bush was clear on one point just 24 hours before he and other world leaders gathered to praise the past performance and future expansion of NATO: The U.S. has no use for the international military alliance in a war with Iraq.
Bush is lobbying individual NATO members to back the U.S., but he is flatly avoiding the possibility that such a conflict would be run under anything but U.S. control. Administration officials said experiences in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo show that the NATO command structure is too cumbersome.
And though NATO may issue a resolution supporting the disarming of Iraq, there is little chance that Bush could achieve unanimity among alliance members to participate in any conflict, because German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has pledged that his country would not fight in Iraq.
“We will consult with our friends, and all nations will be able to choose whether or not they want to participate,” Bush said, appearing with his host, Czech President Vaclav Havel.
Bush reminded European leaders that the U.S. stood by them in times of crisis and that, because of the strong U.S.-European ties nurtured through NATO, anyone who “chooses you for an enemy chooses us for an enemy.”
“The commitment of my nation to Europe is found in the carefully tended graves of young Americans who died for this continent’s freedom,” he said. “We have no power to rewrite history. We do have the power to write a different story for our time.”
