WASHINGTON/TEHRAN, 2 September — Already under fire from abroad, the Bush administration was criticized across the political spectrum at home yesterday for an Iraq policy in disarray, with top advisers seemingly at odds over the next US move. The latest apparent split came as Secretary of State Colin Powell seemed to differ with Vice President Dick Cheney over the need to get UN inspectors back into Baghdad, and US President George W. Bush came under attack for failing to get his team in line.
Powell yesterday said he supported the return of UN inspectors as a “first step” toward neutralizing Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. Powell’s words directly contradicted a series of strongly-worded speeches by Cheney, who said the time for inspections was over and that a pre-emptive strike was the only viable solution.
Powell, speaking in an interview with the BBC to be aired next weekend, insisted that the president was in favor of sending in the inspectors, although he did not necessarily expect that to solve the problem.
“Iraq has been in violation of these many UN resolutions for most of the last 11 or so years. So as a first step, let’s see what the inspectors find, send them back in, why are they being kept out,” Powell said. The arms experts left Iraq in December 1998 on the eve of a US-British bombing raid and have not been allowed to return.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan, speaking as Bush returned to Washington from a monthlong Texas vacation, insisted there was no difference between Powell’s comments and the Bush administration position that demanded “unfettered” inspections of Iraq’s capability for weapons of mass destruction. “It’s what we’ve been saying all along,” McClellan said.
But the administration plan for Iraq has been anything but clear, as evidenced by the rash of conflicting comments and unrelenting chorus of concern expressed at home and abroad. “There have been nuanced disagreements from day one ... and they should be brought under control,” said former Secretary of State Alexander Haig, a Republican. “He’s got to lead, he’s got to unify, he’s got to ... start speaking with one voice.”
Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz said Cheney had provided no evidence to support pre-emptive action. “They are telling wrongly ... that Iraq is reproducing weapons of mass destruction,” Aziz told CNN. “That’s not true. We are ready to prove it.” In pressing for action against Baghdad, the White House has brushed off a ground swell of unease among European allies, Muslim states and broader world public opinion. While polls show Americans continue to back an attack on Iraq, support has fallen in recent months.
Richard Holbrooke, the US ambassador to the United Nations under President Bill Clinton, said the Powell comments, coming after Cheney last week twice made high-profile pitches for action against Iraq, pointed out the administration’s inability to articulate a policy. The US threats against Iraq have sparked widespread opposition overseas.
“It’s more of a summer of public disarray by the administration,” Holbrooke told “Fox News Sunday.” “Instead of making the case unambiguously with a single group of people singing from the same song sheet, they’re singing at least, at a minimum, different lyrics to the same music, and they’re undermining their case,” he said.
Former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, who served in the administration of the president’s father, former President George Bush, told the NBC “Meet the Press” program, “There is a disconnect here and I don’t understand it.”
The new chorus of criticism on the yesterday television talk shows surfaced after another week of intense debate over whether the United States should act on Bush’s stated desire to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein because he is rebuilding weapons of mass destruction.
Like many, Holbrooke argued the administration had to approach the UN Security Council for another resolution for action against Iraq — whether the United States won or not. US Sen. Richard Lugar, a prominent Republican from Indiana, agreed on CNN’s “Late Edition.”
Terry McAuliffe, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, told CBS’ “Face the Nation” the president needed to better make his case at home. “People are very perplexed about where we are. I think when the president comes back this week he needs to talk to the country ... to the members of Congress, so that we can have a consensus as we move toward Iraq.”
Key US ally Turkey and longtime foe Iran said in Tehran yesterday they wanted Washington to resolve its differences with Iraq through “peaceful means”, rejecting US plans to strike the country. Washington’s crisis with Iraq over its weapons of mass destruction “must be resolved through peaceful means,” Turkish Foreign Minister Sukru Sina Gurel said quoted by Iranian state television.
“Any change must be decided by the Iraqi people,” he said, in a veiled reference to US President George W. Bush’s promises to oust the regime of Saddam Hussein. Gurel was the fourth top diplomat of a pro-Western state in as many weeks to beat a path to Tehran to voice opposition to US Iraq policy.
His Iranian counterpart Kamal Kharrazi reiterated opposition to US plans to strike Baghdad, but criticized Iraq for being “unpredictable” in its actions.
“The Iraqi regime is unpredictable and over the past two decades has caused much damage to countries in the region,” Kharrazi said, a reference to the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988 and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. (The Independent)
