- SAN ANTONIO (Reuters)
- Vice President Dick Cheney on Thursday hammered home the U.S. case for
pre-emptive action against Iraq, brushing off a groundswell of unease among
European allies, Muslim states and broader world public opinion.
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- Cheney used a gathering of Korean War veterans to repeat
an earlier indictment of Saddam Hussein, charging the Iraqi leader with
acquiring weapons of mass destruction and posing a "mortal threat"
to the United States.
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- He also downplayed concerns, laid out by some senior
members of his Republican Party and echoed abroad, that a U.S. strike could
hamper the global war on terrorism and undermine pro-U.S. governments in
the Arab world.
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- "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein
now has weapons of mass destruction," Cheney said, reprising a fighting
speech he gave on Monday in Nashville, Tennessee. "There is no doubt
that he is amassing them to use them against our friends, against our allies
and against us," he said.
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- "The elected leaders of the country have a responsibility
to consider all available options and we are doing so. What we must not
do in the face of a mortal threat is to give in to wishful thinking or
to willful blindness. We must not simply look away, hope for the best and
leave the matter for some future administration to resolve," he said.
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- COOL RECEPTION ABROAD
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- Cheney's Nashville speech had sparked a fresh round of
critical remarks in many states, including close European ally France,
which questioned the right under international law of the United States
to act unilaterally.
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- Congress, back next week from its summer recess, has
announced hearings on Iraq, inviting senior administration figures to outline
their proposed course of action.
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- A White House spokesman said U.S. officials would cooperate
fully with the lawmakers. In July the administration had declined to take
part in Senate hearings, saying it did not want to be locked into positions
prematurely.
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- "What is important is that we have an agreement,
an essential agreement among the American people, through their elected
representatives in Congress, that the country is behind this effort in
its own self defense against terrorist acts," House Democratic Leader
Richard Gephardt told CNN.
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- Meanwhile, foreign leaders pressed Washington to work
with international weapons inspectors to rein in the Iraqi weapons program,
and to seek U.N. approval for any future military campaign if inspections
failed.
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- In his remarks on Thursday, Cheney responded to this,
recalling what he called the Iraqi "science" of deceiving weapons
inspectors in the past and saying a return to Iraq of inspection teams
was no guarantee of disarmament.
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- French President Jacques Chirac said earlier on Thursday
he was concerned by what he called a "temptation to seek to legitimize
the use of unilateral and pre-emptive force." Any such attack, Chirac
said, would require U.N. authorization.
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- TURMOIL IN ISLAMIC WORLD
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- Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke with German, British
and Spanish foreign ministers in the last 24 hours, in part to discuss
Iraq, his spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters.
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- Powell was "taking up the fact that Iraq's defiance
of the Security Council and development of weapons of mass destruction
constitutes a danger that we have to deal with, and discussing with these
countries how to deal with that," Boucher said.
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- Muslim leaders kept a united front of pressure on Washington
to avert a strike against Iraq, saying it could unleash fresh turmoil in
the Islamic world by widening a gulf between Muslims and the West.
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- Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Egyptian President
Hosni Mubarak, both pivotal pro-U.S. figures in the Muslim world, joined
the growing chorus of open opposition to proposed U.S. intervention.
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- White House officials stress no decision has been taken
on a proposed military strike, and they have pledged to consult with U.S.
allies and regional powers beforehand.
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- On the campaign trail in support of fellow Republican
candidates in Oklahoma City, President Bush made no direct mention of U.S.
determination to oust the Iraqi leader. But he made it clear Saddam remained
on his mind.
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- "We must not allow the world's worst leaders to
develop and harbor the world's worst weapons," Bush said at a fund-raising
speech. The remark is his standard stump-speech line generally regarded
as referring to Saddam.
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