- UNITED NATIONS (Reuters)
-- Two years after warning the United Nations to act against Iraq or risk
irrelevancy, President Bush on Tuesday defended the U.S.-led invasion and
urged skeptical world leaders to help Iraq become a democracy in the face
of a deadly insurgency.
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- In a U.N. speech with election-year overtones, Bush made
no apologies about his decision to go to war against Iraq in 2003 without
U.N. Security Council backing based on claims Iraq possessed weapons of
mass destruction, which were not found.
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- Instead, he acknowledged the presence of Iyad Allawi,
the interim prime minister of Iraq, and declared, "Since the last
meeting of this General Assembly, the people of Iraq have regained sovereignty."
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- Later, he added, "The U.N., and its member nations,
must respond to Prime Minister Allawi's request, and do more to help build
an Iraq that is secure, democratic, federal, and free."
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- Bush's 21-minute speech was met mostly with stony silence,
save for polite applause at the end.
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- He appeared at the United Nations at a time of rising
violence in Iraq, with suicide car bombings and beheadings, and some lawmakers
in his own Republican Party are questioning his Iraq policy. Democrats
warn of a quagmire for U.S. troops.
-
- His opponent in the Nov. 2 election, Democratic Sen.
John Kerry, wasted little time in declaring Bush's speech a failure for
not leveling with world leaders about the depth of the situation in Iraq.
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- "Iraq is in crisis, and the president needs to live
in the world of reality, not in a world of fantasy spin," Kerry told
reporters in Jacksonville, Florida. He said Bush "does not have the
credibility to lead the world."
-
- In his speech, Bush did portray Iraq as a dangerous place,
with militants "conducting a campaign of bombings against civilians
and the beheadings of bound men."
-
- He predicted more violence in the days ahead as both
Iraq and Afghanistan attempt to hold national elections -- next month in
Afghanistan, and in January in Iraq.
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- "The proper response to difficulty is not to retreat
-- it is to prevail," he said.
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- 'DEFYING' PESSIMISTIC PREDICTIONS
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- Taking a few questions from reporters in a subsequent
meeting with Allawi, Bush all but dismissed a CIA report leaked last week
that offered a gloomy outlook in Iraq with the worst scenario a civil war.
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- "The CIA laid out several scenarios. It said that
life could be lousy, life could be OK, life could be better. And they were
just guessing as to what the conditions might be like," he said. "The
Iraq citizens are defying the pessimistic predictions."
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- Allawi blamed the media for ignoring good news in Iraq.
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- Bush's speech was mostly free of the combativeness of
his address in 2002 when he warned world leaders that Saddam Hussein was
a grave and gathering danger and that they must act to back up past U.N.
resolutions or else be irrelevant.
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- He reminded the General Assembly of the Security Council's
refusal to go along with the U.S.-led coalition in backing up with action
a resolution passed unanimously before the war that threatened serious
consequences for Iraq.
-
- "The commitments we make must have meaning,"
Bush said. "When we say serious consequences for the sake of peace,
there must be serious consequences."
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- U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said last week the
war was illegal and in a speech before Bush talked, condemned Iraqi prisoner
abuses at Abu Ghraib prison.
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- "In hindsight, experience shows that actions taken
without a mandate which has been clearly defined in a Security Council
resolution are doomed to failure," Swiss President Joseph Deiss said
in a speech to the assembly.
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- Bush cast the Iraq conflict as a moment of opportunity
for transforming the Middle East, and in a direct challenge to Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, urged Israel to impose a freeze on Jewish
settlements in the West Bank and Gaza and to dismantle "unauthorized
outposts."
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- -Additional reporting by David Morgan
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- http://news.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6296500
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