Posted on 03/01/2003 12:47:38 PM PST by AntiGuv
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq started destroying its banned al-Samoud missiles on Saturday under the gaze of U.N. inspectors, complicating a U.S. push to win international support to go to war against Baghdad for failing to disarm.
U.S. preparations for war suffered a further blow when Turkey's parliament rejected a long-awaited motion that would have allowed the United States to deploy 62,000 troops in Turkey for a possible invasion of Iraq.
Four Iraqi missiles with a range exceeding the 93-mile limit set in U.N. resolutions were crushed under the supervision of U.N. inspectors on Saturday. "I can confirm now that four al-Samoud missiles have been destroyed," a U.N. spokesman told Reuters.
Iraq is thought to have produced around 100 al-Samoud 2 missiles, deploying about 50 in military bases around Baghdad.
Iraqi compliance had been seen as crucial before chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix addresses the Security Council late next week -- after which the United States and Britain want to bring to a vote a draft resolution that lays the ground for war.
The scrapping of the first of Iraq's most advanced surface-to-surface missiles was hailed as a "significant piece of real disarmament" by Blix, but was dismissed by Washington as part of a "game of deception."
In Ankara, Turkish leader Tayyip Erdogan said parliament's decision not to let U.S. troops use Turkish bases and ports was a "completely democratic result," suggesting he would accept it. The ruling party will meet on Sunday, but Erdogan gave no clue to his intentions.
There is widespread opposition in Turkey to a war on Iraq, but acceptance of U.S. troops, enabling Washington to open a northern front into Iraq and probably shorten any war, would have brought hefty U.S. financial aid and the chance to send Turkish troops into northern Iraq to protect Ankara's interests.
The parliamentary motion, the climax of lengthy negotiations with Washington, was approved by a simple majority but not the overall majority of MPs present.
A State Department spokesman said only that the United States was seeking clarification of the vote.
UAE WANTS SADDAM TO GO
Pressure on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein came from an unexpected source in the form of the United Arab Emirates, which became the first Arab state to call officially on him and his aides to go into exile.
Washington has said such a solution, proposed by the UAE at an Arab summit in Egypt on Saturday, could spare the region another war. But Saddam said this week he would rather die than go into exile.
The Arab League summit issued a communique opposing an attack on Iraq as a threat to Arab national security, and said member countries would not participate in any war.
The mood on the street was also strongly opposed to war.
In one of the biggest protests in the Middle East, more than 300,000 Yemenis took to the streets denouncing the United States, its main ally Britain and Israel as an "axis of evil" and urging Arab leaders to deny Washington help in a war.
In Turkey around 20,000 protesters took to the streets of Ankara urging parliament to reject Washington's request to use the country as a launchpad for an attack.
The Vatican, which does not believe an attack on Iraq would be a "just war," said Pope John Paul would send a senior cardinal to Washington on a personal peace mission.
In Iraq the Republican Guards, the country's best-equipped special forces, met Saddam and told him they were ready "to sacrifice to the level of martyrdom to defend their leader, their country and their sanctities," the official Iraq News Agency said.
MISSILE DESTRUCTION
Hiro Ueki, the spokesman for the U.N. inspectors, said the destruction of the proscribed al-Samoud 2 missiles, components and related systems was taking place at the Taji military base, some 25 miles north of Baghdad.
Uday al-Taei, a senior official of the Iraqi Information Ministry, said a "a timetable and action plan" had been agreed for the coming days.
Iraq's promise to destroy one of its major weapons systems did little to heal divisions in the U.N. Security Council, with the United States and Britain saying it meant little and Russia welcoming the decision.
The United States says the missiles are the tip of the iceberg and that Baghdad is trying to mask the fact that it has huge stores of the weapons the U.N. requires it to scrap. Iraq denies it has banned weapons.
"(U.N.) Resolution 1441 called for a complete, total and immediate disarmament. It did not call for pieces of disarmament. The president has always predicted that Iraq would destroy its al-Samoud missiles as part of their game of deception," said White House spokeswoman Mercy Viana.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw echoed the U.S. view, saying, "What Saddam Hussein does...is he plays the international community, trying to divide and trying to trickle out concessions."
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko applauded the Iraqi move. "We see this as highly important evidence of Iraq's cooperation with the United Nations," he told Interfax news agency.
In a pre-recorded weekly radio address, President Bush again threatened military action while promising a brighter future for the Iraqi people once Saddam is gone.
"The United States has no intention of determining the precise form of Iraq's new government. That choice belongs to the Iraqi people. Yet we will ensure that one brutal dictator is not replaced by another," Bush said.
Bush has said a new resolution, while desirable, is not necessary for Washington to justify a U.S.-led attack, and he has assembled a large force in the Gulf region to carry one out.
He desperately needs to get out of "talk" mode and take action. Whether he or the military is ready or not.
He's on the knife's edge. Relevance or irrelevance runs both directions.
Good old Reuters.
They didn't even wait for the second paragraph to slip in the lie.
I think Bush is committed to ending Saddam (he has no choice but to be), it's just that he's let this go on so long now that it's going to be much tougher, with many more problems (like these) than it could have been if he didn't talk so tough and act so little in the ridiculously long road up to this point.
But he has lost the diplomatic war, his only recourse is to turn his back on it and change the facts on the ground -- no matter how unpopular that is around the world. He cannot win diplomatically, the cards have all been stacked against him in that realm, from the beginning.
It is simply unthinkable that he wouldn't now act immediately, concrete action, to alter the situation. He cannot withstand continued setbacks in this realm without changing the equation.
To continue on this diplomatic path would be to admit that France is strong enough to stop the U.S. And worse, at the end of that path is France as the pre-eminent world power! He simply can't and (I believe) won't allow that result.
That's not true. We chose this course. It wasn't required of us.
I mean, hey, we tried to help them prepare, they just didn't cooporate...
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