NEW YORK, Sept. 12 (UPI) -- President George W. Bush will challenge the members of the United Nations Thursday to compel Saddam Hussein to obey the world body's resolutions or lose the credibility it has fought for since it was formed at San Francisco over 50 years ago.
To support the president's position, the White House early Thursday released a detailed report reiterating its case against Iraq, including a list of Iraq's U.N. violations, a discussion of the country's development of weapons of mass destruction and suspected support for international terrorism, and its alleged mistreatment of the Iraqi people.
Though the report brought out no new evidence about Iraq, it accused Iraq of active deception and claimed that at the present time it is preparing proscribed weapons of mass destruction.
In his second major address to the General Assembly since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the president hopes to sound an alarm in the world body about Iraq's arsenal of weapons and what he sees as deadly intentions to use them.
"Inaction is simply not an option" will be Bush's message to the assembly, a senior administration official told reporters at a briefing.
"I believe this is an international problem and that we must work together to deal with the problem," the president said in a Rose Garden appearance Tuesday. Bush said he is deeply concerned about Saddam's ignoring the United Nations for all these years, but his senior aides said the president will not call for immediate military action, instead demanding that the United Nations set a deadline for Iraq to allow open and thorough inspection.
The entire pace of the confrontation with Iraq seems to have changed in the past two weeks. In August, unconfirmed reports had military buildups under way in the Gulf region and military action was rumored to be within weeks.
But congressional resistance to unilateral action, the reluctance of many allies to join a military adventure not authorized by the United Nations, and the very involved protocols of the inspection process would seem to put any military action off for weeks or at least months.
Congress this week began hearings on Iraq, and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and CIA Director George Tenet provided briefings to senators. Republican leader Trent Lott of Mississippi said a vote on Iraq could come before the recess begins in October, but others think congressional action could not come until after the elections.
Two former U.N. arms inspectors told a House subcommittee Tuesday that a thorough inspection in Iraq could involve as many as 1,000 U.N. special commission arms inspectors, helicopters, sophisticated sensors and intelligence about sales and shipments of weapons material from every U.N. member.
The inspection teams fielded after the Gulf War numbered at the most 100 inspectors, and they had no power to get quickly to a site or get to multiple sites in a timely way. They have charged that Saddam's regime is trying to deceive the United Nations by moving materials and personnel around ahead of the inspections. To be effective, several experts contend, the U.N. weapons inspection commission must be able to inspect sites all over the country at the same time.
But there is a critical shortage of trained inspectors and it could take months to pull together effective teams, these experts speculated.
"If you have a regime that is determined to deny, to deceive, the inspectors don't have a chance," said Richard Spertzel, former head U.N. biological weapons inspector.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair told a labor gathering in Blackpool, England, that without force being behind diplomatic overtures, they were useless.
"Diplomacy is vital, " he said. "But when dealing with dictators -- and none in the world is worse than Saddam Hussein -- diplomacy has to be backed by the certain knowledge in the dictator's mind that behind the diplomacy is the possibility of force."
Bush is expected to reiterate Thursday the doctrine he proposed at West Point in June that the United States reserves the right to conduct a pre-emptive strike to avert an attack against its interests. The president reiterated this message in an op-ed piece for The New York Times Wednesday.
