Bush rebuffs allies' efforts for inspections

Washington - As U.N. weapons inspectors indicated some progress in weekend talks with Iraq, the United States chastised President Saddam Hussein on Sunday for continuing to play "hide-and-seek" with his deadliest arms and rejected a European proposal to avert an immediate war.

President Bush said it is now time for the United Nations to face the "moment of truth."

Chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, concluding two days of talks, said Sunday that the inspections are "not at all at the end of the road" but that he detected a new attitude in Baghdad. The regime provided additional documents on chemical and biological weapons and missile development, although it had not yet agreed to allow U-2 surveillance overflights, he said.

But the United States appeared determined to rebuff any further inspection efforts. Bush, speaking at a Republican policy conference, charged that the Iraqi leader "wants the world to think that hide-and-seek is a game that we should play. And it's over."

The administration also continued to press hard for a new U.N. resolution condoning the use of force to finish the job of disarming Hussein. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell rejected ideas from France and Germany to give U.N. teams more time and more muscle to carry out inspections in Iraq.

Powell called on the United Nations to meet soon to make a final determination on whether "serious consequences are due at this time." In an administration media blitz of the Sunday talk shows, Powell said the time for inspections is over because Baghdad has shown that it will not comply with Security Council Resolution 1441. The evidence, he said, includes an incomplete accounting of its weapons programs that it delivered to the U.N. in December.

"This lack of cooperation by Iraq and the false declaration, all the other actions that they have taken and not taken since the resolution passed ... all set the stage for the U.N. to go into session and find whether or not serious consequences are appropriate at this time," Powell said on "Fox News Sunday."

"I don't think the next step should be, 'Let's send in more inspectors to be stiffed by the Iraqis,' " he said.

German Defense Minister Peter Struck said a proposal to formally strengthen inspections will be introduced at the U.N. on Friday, when Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei give their progress report to the Security Council.

Although the French Foreign Ministry denied Sunday that there is any secret new plan, Struck said after a two-day international defense conference in Munich, Germany, that France and Germany stand "shoulder to shoulder" and hope their initiative will be received positively in the Security Council.

Despite the Bush administration's attempts to deflect the new ideas, the clash of wills over Iraq between the United States and its two long-standing allies appeared to be deepening.

The ideas under discussion in Europe, French diplomats said, included tripling the number of U.N. inspectors in Iraq, declaring the entire country a "no-fly" zone and increasing aerial surveillance — all as 150,000 U.S. troops remain deployed around the nation to maintain pressure. Another idea, proposed by Germany, would deploy U.N. troops to back up the inspectors.

Powell said he had not been informed of any new plan. French envoys said Sunday that the proposals were making the rounds on the Continent to gain wider backing before possibly taking shape in a new resolution at the Security Council.

In Germany for talks with Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin said a consensus against rushing into war had emerged among France, Germany, China and Russia. Putin said the countries' foreign ministers and U.N. envoys were coordinating their efforts.

Putin was scheduled to hold talks in Paris today with French President Jacques Chirac.

But America's top diplomat said time is fast running out for diplomatic solutions.

"We cannot let this game just keep continuing week after week after week as we find new and different reasons and new and different approaches to avoid the situation which is clearly in front of us," Powell said on ABC's "This Week."

National security advisor Condoleezza Rice called the latest European effort a diversion.

She said the United States was not prepared to accept any incremental progress, indicating that the inroads reported Sunday by Blix and ElBaradei would not be enough to avert military intervention.

"We have seen this game with Iraq many times before throughout the '90s: cheat and retreat. When there's enough pressure, the Iraqis try to give just a little bit in order to release the pressure," Rice said on CBS' "Face the Nation."

Resolution 1441 said Iraq had a final chance to live up to its obligations. "So a little bit here and a little bit there is not going to get this done," Rice said.

She said Baghdad is now in grave danger of triggering the "serious consequences" spelled out in the resolution, which passed unanimously last fall.

Sounding increasingly tough, Powell later told reporters that the president is prepared to circumvent the United Nations if no consensus on a new resolution approving military intervention emerges soon.

"If the U.N. finds that it does not have the will to act, then President Bush has made it clear that he would act and ... we are confident we would be joined by many other nations in that action," he said.

The White House, meanwhile, indicated it was not impressed with Blix's statement suggesting at least some progress in Iraq. The inspectors were also told that the Iraqi government would notify them before their Friday report on whether Baghdad would allow U-2 overflights.

"Given the fact that Saddam Hussein is not disarming, time is running out," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.

But in a sign that inspections continue to have some key congressional support, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said Sunday that the United States should explore proposals to avoid another Middle East conflict.

"We ought to be welcoming efforts to forestall war, even if we disagree with those efforts after we read them," Levin said on "Fox News Sunday."

"We should not treat the U.N. Security Council as some kind of a stumbling block," he said. -- Los Angeles Times

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