- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President
Bush said on Monday the United States would use all tools at its disposal
to carry out its goal of ousting Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
-
- At a news conference, Bush reiterated official U.S. policy
aimed at ending Saddam's rule in Iraq. "It's a stated policy of this
government to have regime change. And it hasn't changed," Bush said.
"And we'll use all tools at our disposal to do so."
-
- "Listen, I recognize there's speculation out there,
but people shouldn't speculate about the desire of the government to have
a regime change," Bush added. "And there's different ways to
do it."
-
- Expectations that Bush would order an attack on Iraq
to oust its leader, whom it accuses of developing biological and chemical
weapons, have risen this year after he accused Iraq, along with Iran and
North Korea, of belonging to an "axis of evil."
-
- The United States has frequently clashed militarily with
the Iraqi leader ever since leading a coalition force in 1991 to expel
him from Kuwait.
-
- Bush declined 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 U.S. Marines and soldiers probably invading
from Kuwait.
-
- 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 United States said on Monday that the failure of
talks between Iraq and the United Nations last week showed that Washington
was right to suspect that Iraq is 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.
-
- At talks in Vienna last week between U.N. Secretary-General
Kofi Annan and Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri, Iraq did not agree to
U.N. proposals that it let arms inspectors return to the country after
a gap of 3-1/2 years.
-
- Boucher said: "We're back in the same situation
... Iraq has once again come and gone without indicating it intends to
implement the requirements of the Security Council, without indicating
that it intends to implement the obligations that Iraq took on freely and
of itself 10 years ago."
-
- "(It has not indicated) that it intends to allow
inspectors to come in with unfettered access to verify that they're not
doing what we suspect they're doing and they claim they're not, and that
is developing weapons of mass destruction," he added.
|
