Key Developments Concerning Iraq
Tuesday March 18, 2003 9:30 PM
%dheadline(^Key developments concerning Iraq<<%) Key developments concerning the diplomatic and military efforts to disarm Iraq
By The Associated Press
Developments in the Iraq crisis:
- Saddam Hussein defied the U.S. ultimatum to leave Iraq with his sons by Wednesday night or face war. Saddam appeared on television in military uniform for the first time since the 1991 Gulf War, warning his commanders to prepare for battle. Iraq's al-Shabab television, owned by Saddam's eldest son, Odai, said the decision to defy the ultimatum was made in a leadership meeting chaired by the Iraqi leader. Mobilized by a televised appeal, thousands of demonstrators swept into the streets of Baghdad to show their support for Saddam.
- A day after delivering the ultimatum in a televised address to the nation, President Bush reached out to the leaders of Russia and China, two countries that resisted setting an ultimatum for using force against Saddam. But Vladimir Putin and Hu Jintao told Bush they still preferred a U.N.-brokered solution.
- French President Jacques Chirac, whose country led opposition to war within the U.N. Security Council, said the action Bush had chosen would undermine future efforts at peaceful disarmament.
- Secretary of State Colin Powell said that 30 nations declared varying levels of support for a war against Iraq as part of the administration's ``coalition of the willing,'' and 15 others gave their backing privately.
- Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa called off a possible last-minute peacemaking trip to Iraq, in what appeared to signal the end of Arab efforts to avert a war.
- Troops in the Kuwaiti desert loaded their ammunition and combat gear into fighting vehicles, ready to invade on short notice.
- Airlines around the world began canceling flights to the Middle East as fears of a war in Iraq kept passengers away in droves.
- U.N. weapons inspectors flew out of Iraq, the latest in a steady stream of foreigners to abandon Iraq in recent days. In Baghdad, residents stocked up on food, lined up for gas and taped their windows for fear of flying glass from U.S. bombs.
- Apparently jolted into action by Washington's ultimatum to Saddam, Iraqi Kurds left key cities for mountain villages seen as potential sanctuaries if Iraq retaliates against the Kurd's Western-protected enclave.
- Russian lawmakers postponed indefinitely a vote to ratify a U.S.-Russian nuclear arms treaty, as parliament speaker Gennady Seleznyov warned that a war against Iraq could endanger the pact.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-2490190,00.html