In a clear reference to military action,
US President George W. Bush has declared America will use "all tools"
available to remove President Saddam Hussein in the wake of reports that
Iraq was moving to rebuild its arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.
Mr Bush reiterated official US policy aimed at ending Saddam's rule in
Iraq. "It's a stated policy of this government to have the regime change.
And it hasn't changed," he said. The US would "use all tools at our
disposal" to effect the change, he added.
Mr Bush said he was involved in all aspects of planning Iraq policy.
"I'm involved in the military planning, diplomatic planning, financial
planning, all aspects of reviewing all the tools at my disposal," he said.
Britain's Financial Times newspaper reported yesterday that Iraq was
cultivating ties with the former Soviet state of Ukraine in a bid to
rebuild an arsenal of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
"For some years there was an intensive defence-technology relationship
between Ukraine and Iraq," the paper quoted former UN weapons inspector
Timothy McCarthy as saying.
Mr McCarthy now works with the Monterey Institute for International
Studies.
"This appears to be re-emerging and we don't want to repeat the
mistakes of the past."
The newspaper's report concluded that Iraq, Iran and North Korea were
actively trying to procure nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
Expectations that Mr Bush would order an attack on Iraq to oust Saddam
have risen this year since the US president described Iraq, along with
Iran and North Korea, as belonging to an "axis of evil".
Several European governments have been concerned about any US military
action to oust Saddam, a concern made more acute by a breakdown in talks
last week to put United Nations weapons inspectors back in Iraq.
Mr Bush declined on Monday to comment on a New York Times report last
week that a draft military plan for an invasion of Iraq envisioned a
multi-pronged attack with tens of thousands of US marines and soldiers
probably invading from Kuwait.
"Listen, I recognise there's speculation out there, but people
shouldn't speculate about the desire of the government to have a regime
change," Mr Bush said. "And there's different ways to do it."
Mr Bush also dismissed as "hypothetical" a question on whether he
wanted Saddam removed before the end of his four-year term as president,
which expires in January 2005.
The US has frequently clashed militarily with the Iraqi leader since
leading a coalition force in 1991 to expel him from Kuwait.
The US said on Monday that the failure of talks between Iraq and the UN
last week showed that Washington was right to suspect Iraq was working on
weapons of mass destruction.
"The fact that Iraq once again failed to take advantage of this
opportunity . . . to come clean for the world, I think would have to
indicate suspicions about what they're up to," State Department spokesman
Richard Boucher told a daily briefing.
