- LONDON (Reuters) - Former
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev appealed to Britain and the United States
Thursday not to go to war in Iraq, warning that any unilateral action could
destroy the international coalition against terror.
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- "I strongly hope the U.S. and Britain will not be
fighting a war in the Middle East," he told the Daily Mirror newspaper.
"They should be using political means, not military."
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- Speculation that the U.S. will attack Iraq to oust President
Saddam Hussein has intensified since talks aimed at putting U.N. weapons
inspectors back in the country broke down last week.
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- Gorbachev, whose reforms in the late 1980s helped pave
the way for an end to the Cold War, said the United States "must not
ignore the U.N. Security Council."
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- "We have a full set of political, economic and diplomatic
methods that should be used to deal with Iraq," he told the newspaper.
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- "Important and serious political decisions should
not be taken unilaterally. If such decisions are taken unilaterally that
could destroy the coalition against terror," he added.
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- President Bush -- fully supported by British Prime Minister
Tony Blair -- is leading the global "war on terror" following
the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
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- In his state of the nation speech earlier this year,
Bush branded Iraq, North Korea and Iran part of an "axis of evil,"
accusing the three nations of stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.
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- "Iraq is an important country and both that nation
and the world should not be put at risk without really trying all the other
various measures and approaches available," Gorbachev said.
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- Allowing U.N. weapons inspectors to return after a 3-1/2
year absence is seen as key to lifting U.N. sanctions that were imposed
on Iraq following its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
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