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Bush Warns Saddam: "Day of Reckoning’ Coming"

http://www.msnbc.com/news/842500.asp?0cv=CA01

Jan. 2 — U.S. President Bush issued a tough new warning to Iraq on Thursday, saying President Saddam Hussein’s “day of reckoning” was approaching. The comments by Bush, who dismissed Baghdad’s criticism of U.S. “hegemony,” came amid a major new deployment of U.S. forces — with even larger deployments under consideration. Meanwhile, Western warplanes dumped leaflets over Iraq, urging citizens to tune in to U.S. radio.

IRAQ’S DEPUTY PRIME minister, Tariq Aziz, accused Washington of “an imperialist design” to invade his country regardless of the verdict of U.N. weapons inspectors who are combing Iraq for alleged weapons of mass destruction.

But Bush told reporters later at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, that he has seen little evidence Saddam would disarm peacefully. “For 11 long years the world has dealt with him, and now he’s got to understand his day of reckoning is coming,” the president said.

“He is a man who likes to play games and charades, and ... the first indication isn’t very positive that he will voluntarily disarm,” Bush said.
Bush has pledged to disarm Saddam, with force if necessary, but says he has not yet made a decision to attack.

DEPLOYMENT SPEEDS UP
Bush spoke as more than 11,000 American troops prepared to head for the Persian Gulf.

NBC learned that the next round of deployment orders under consideration by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld could affect well over 25,000 combat troops, airmen and sailors.
“It’s bigger than the last one,” said one U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

If Rumsfeld decides to order more forces to the gulf, the U.S. military would have close to 140,000 troops in the region, far short of the more than 250,000 U.S. troops deployed for the Gulf War.

In the deployment now under way, troops with the 3rd Infantry Division from Georgia are heading to the region. The majority are expected to arrive in the region at the beginning of February.

MESSAGE TO IRAQIS
Meanwhile, U.S.-British patrols dropped 480,000 leaflets over two cities in a “no-fly” zone of southern Iraq, pressing Iraqi troops and citizens to listen to American special forces radio broadcasts to the area, the U.S. military said.

Leaflets providing frequencies of broadcasts slamming Saddam and information on U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 and U.N. arms inspections in Iraq were dropped over Nasiriyah and Basra, the U.S. military’s Central Command said.

Under the U.N. resolution, passed in November, Iraq must disarm or face serious consequences.
It was the 12th such mass dropping of leaflets, including many warning the Iraqi military to stop targeting U.S. and British warplanes, in the last three months.

U.S.: NO COUP PLAN
Also on Thursday, the State Department dismissed an Iranian report that the United States was planning a bloodless coup to remove Saddam from power.

But State Department spokesman Richard Boucher noted that Secretary of State Colin Powell and Rumsfeld have both spoken in favor of Saddam resigning. “If he has the option, he ought to take it. ... I’m not aware of any active efforts to promote such proposals,” Boucher said.

The Iranian daily Entekhab reported on Thursday that the United States wants to remove Saddam from power without the cost or bloodshed of another war. The newspaper said the German foreign minister told his Iranian counterpart by telephone that Washington sought a bloodless coup with the help of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“It’s been heard that Joschka Fischer, German foreign minister, has told Kamal Kharrazi in a phone conversation that America is set to overthrow Saddam Hussein without a war, bloodshed and heavy military expenditure,” it said.

The German foreign ministry confirmed the two ministers spoke by telephone, but declined to comment on the content of their discussion.

At the same time, a group of Arab writers and lawyers planned to appeal to the Arab world to put pressure on Saddam to step down.

“We call upon public opinion in the Arab world to exercise pressure for the dismissal from power of Saddam Hussein and his close aides in order to stop a war that threatens catastrophe for the people of the region,” said a copy of the appeal, obtained by Reuters and set to be published later this week.

“The immediate resignation of Saddam, whose rule over three decades has been a nightmare for Iraq and the Arab world, is the only way around further violence,” it reads.

The appeal — made by lawyers and writers fed up with their governments’ opposition to U.S. policy on Iraq without presenting an alternative — also calls for international human rights monitors to be stationed across Iraq to oversee a transition to democratic rule.

The idea of asylum for Saddam in return for his resignation was put forward recently in an open letter to Saddam by Ghassan Tueini, a former Lebanese statesman and publisher of Beirut’s influential An-Nahar daily. The letter was titled “resignation is more honorable.”

IRAQ CONDEMNS RESOLUTION
A U.N. resolution passed Monday by a 13-0 vote with Russia and Syria abstaining, puts new limits on Iraq’s purchases of certain communications equipment and antibiotics that the United States and Britain said could be used by the Iraqi military in a war.

Iraq criticized the resolution in editorials in the state-run press. The daily Al-Jumhuriya said the resolution, which deals with goods Iraq can import under the U.N. oil for food program, is new evidence of Washington’s “hegemony” over the Security Council.

“This is a bad resolution which would lead to inflicting a deliberate damage and harm to our people,” the paper said.
It said the members of the Security Council should “stand against the obvious U.S. domination of the council and ... foil the mad U.S. attempts to wage aggression on Iraq under the cover of the Security Council.”

MILITARY INDUSTRIAL SITE SEARCHED
On Thursday, U.N. weapons inspectors continued their effort to verify Baghdad’s claim that it has no weapons of mass destruction. A U.N. spokesman said teams from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency drove to six sites in central and northwest Iraq.

One team returned to the Al Fat’h military industry site 18 miles west of Baghdad which conducts research and development on missiles and rockets. It was unclear why they made a second visit to the site.

On Wednesday, inspectors searched another missile maintenance workshop, a repair shop for heavy trucks and returned to a brewery and a 7UP bottling plant for another inspection.

U.N. sources told Reuters that the experts would start aerial inspections by helicopter in the next few days.
The inspectors would also set up a permanent base in the town of Mosul on Saturday to oversee inspections in northern Iraq, the U.N. sources told Reuters.