Powell: Iraq lied

| Thursday, December 19, 2002

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Iraq has totally failed to comply with U.N. disarmament demands and if it continues its pattern of lies and deception "we're not going to find a peaceful solution to this problem," Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday.


Key U.S. allies agreed with the finding, which President Bush could use as a step toward war.


Powell stopped just short of threatening war with Iraq as he declared it in "material breach," or violation, of several U.N. Security Council resolutions and another calling for the Iraqi president to stop oppressing the Iraqi people.


In the weeks ahead, Powell said, the United States will "make sure Iraq knows that it will be disarmed one way or the other, and hope that the Iraqi people and Iraqi leaders besides Saddam Hussein realize that they are going to disarm, one way or the other."


Powell spoke at a State Department news conference shortly after Hans Blix, the United Nations' chief weapons inspector, and Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told the Security Council that Iraq's 12,200-page weapons declaration contained relatively little evidence of destructive weapons.


There is no calendar deadline to disarm Iraq by force, Powell said, but added: "Obviously, there is a practical limit to just how long you can go down the road of noncooperation."


Senior U.S. officials said President Bush is unlikely to decide whether to go to war until late January or early February.


They said he would use the time to bolster his case against Saddam with other members of the U.N. Security Council.


Bush is due to make a statement about Iraq today during a meeting at the White House with U.N., European and Russian officials on a pathway to peace between Israel and the Palestinians.