- (AFP) -- The United States is forging ahead with massive
war plans and Baghdad charged that Washington will declare war whatever
it does, although Russia insisted Iraq has not broken the UN arms resolution.
-
- News that more than 110,000 US troops will be deployed
in the Gulf region by the end of January did nothing to calm fears in Iraq
that conflict is coming.
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- The US contention that Iraq is in material breach of
UN disarmament Resolution 1441 is all part of a premeditated plan to wage
war, an official Baghdad newspaper said.
-
- "The game that the United States is playing with
Iraq, with the UN Security Council, with the UNMOVIC and IAEA (weapons
inspectors) is a preconceived game with a clear target: to invade Iraq
militarily," said Al-Iraq.
-
- US Secretary of State Colin "Powell's statement
on doubts and suspicions concerning the Iraqi declaration" that it
has no weapons of mass destruction "and all the other statements is
part of this game," the newspaper said.
-
- "The United States wants to drive us and the world
into a dead end in the hope of getting the Security Council to issue a
new resolution authorising it to wage war, or of provoking a split inside
the council that offers the opportunity to go ahead with its aggressive
plan unilaterally."
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- The influential Babel newspaper, run by President Saddam
Hussein's elder son, Uday, said "Iraq has a choice between aggression
or aggression."
-
- The United States announced Friday it was virtually doubling
its military strength in the Gulf as President George W. Bush said Iraq's
weapons declaration was "not encouraging" for those seeking to
avoid conflict.
-
- British Prime Minister Tony Blair also urged troops to
be ready for war as world powers braced for weeks and possibly months of
wrangling at the United Nations over the best way to disarm Iraq.
-
- The close allies have already declared Iraq in "material
breach" of its United Nations obligations because of alleged omissions
in its December 7 weapons declaration.
-
- Another 50,000 US troops and additional military equipment
will be sent to the Gulf by early January, a US defence official said.
There are already about 65,000 US military personnel in the region, including
15,000 in Kuwait on the border with Iraq.
-
- The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff said on
a visit to Afghanistan Saturday that American troops are ready for action
in Iraq, a day after he inspected soldiers stationed in Qatar as part of
the buildup he said was aimed at forcing Saddam to disarm.
-
- "Clearly we are pledged in Iraq. We are prepared
to fill these pledges and obligations at any time," General Richard
Myers told reporters at Bagram air base, the nerve-centre of US-led military
operations in Afghanistan.
-
- "The US is obviously capable of fighting a war on
two fronts. But the issue is that we are probably not going to have to
do that alone," he said, although he added that a war in Iraq was
by no means inevitable.
-
- On Friday he said the troop buildup in the Gulf was aimed
at bolstering "the diplomatic angle" to make sure the Iraqi regime
"understands the options that it has, that it is fairly up to them
how we go."
-
- The deployment will include tens of thousands of reservists
and give Bush the option to start combat operations against Iraq in late
January or early February, Myers said.
-
- Bush, who on Friday postponed a planned trip to Africa
from January 10 to 17, said Iraq has failed "those who long for peace"
with its arms report.
-
- "We're serious about keeping the peace, we're serious
about working with our friends in the United Nations" to disarm Iraq,
he said.
-
- Thursday "was a disappointing day for those who
long for peace," said the US president, who has vowed to lead a coalition
to end Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programmes.
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- Britain also appeared to be moving closer to a conflict
that Foreign Secretary Jack Straw insisted Thursday is not yet inevitable.
-
- The Times newspaper said Britain would seek UN approval
for war on Iraq in a second resolution at the end of January if arms inspections
showed Saddam was in breach of Resolution 1441.
-
- Russia, however, does not consider that Iraq has breached
the resolution, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said in Washington.
-
- The inspectors' report "is very comprehensive, but
it does not contain alarming definitions that could be interpreted as a
violation of the UN Security Council resolution by that country,"
Ivanov said.
-
- China's Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan, whose country
is one of the five permanent Security Council members with veto power --
along with Britain, France, Russia and the United States -- urged the international
community not to make any hasty decisions.
-
- "At the present time there is no need to hastily
pass verdict on the Iraqi report," he said.
-
- UN arms experts, who have vowed to keep out of the war
of words between Baghdad and Washington, probed at least five sites in
Iraq on Saturday.
-
- The experts, who resumed work on November 27, today number
115 and have inspected some 90 sites.
-
- The New York Times reported Saturday that Washington
will shortly give UN inspectors new intelligence, gathered chiefly by spy
satellites, that may lead them to Iraqi chemical and biological stockpiles.
-
- Chief weapons inspector Han Blix has diplomatically but
forcefully said he cannot improve his inspections without specific intelligence
from Washington.
-
- At the opening of the annual summit of the Gulf Cooperation
Council (GCC) in Doha, the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani,
called for an early completion of the UN weapons inspections.
-
- And in a Christmas greeting delivered to Vatican bodies,
Pope John Paul II said he was concerned about the threat of war breaking
out "with renewed virulence" in the coming year.
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