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12 February 2003

Powell Says the Debate over Iraq Has Reached a Critical Moment

(Says nobody wants war, but sometimes force is necessary) (850)
By Merle D. Kellerhals, Jr.
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington -- Secretary of State Colin Powell told a congressional
committee February 12 that the impasse over Iraq has reached a
decisive moment.
Powell told the House International Relations Committee the world is
reaching a moment of truth as to whether the disarmament of Iraq will
resolve itself peacefully or be resolved by military force.
"The president still hopes it can be resolved peacefully," Powell
said. "I think everybody has that hope. I have that hope. I don't like
war, I've been in war, I've sent men [into] war, I've seen friends die
in war. But sometimes it is necessary when you need it to maintain
international order."
The United States is prepared to lead an international coalition under
U.N. auspices or, if the U.N. will not act -- and "demonstrates its
irrelevance," then the United States will lead a large coalition of
the willing, Powell said.
The House committee was conducting its annual hearing with the
secretary on the State Department's fiscal year 2004 budget proposal.
Powell gave brief remarks about the budget plan, but he then broke
with past practice and immediately launched into a discussion of the
global debate over how best to disarm Iraq.
The issue with Iraq is not whether there should be more weapons
inspectors as the French, Germans and Belgians have argued, he said.
It is about compliance with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 and
the 16 other U.N. resolutions that came before it.
"The United States will not be deterred. Iraq must be disarmed --
peacefully or through the use of military force," he said.
Powell said he would ask France and Germany February 14 at the United
Nations why they want more weapons inspections and how much more time
is necessary, or "are you just delaying for the sake of delaying in
order to get Saddam Hussein off the hook and no disarmament." On
February 14 Hans Blix, chief of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and
Inspection Commission, and Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the
International Atomic Energy Agency, are scheduled to give the U.N.
Security Council an updated report on how cooperative Iraq has been
with U.N. weapons inspectors.
Powell said he still believes it is possible to rally the
international community to discharge its obligations.
"All of the nations that we are now having debates with are, at the
end of the day, allies and friends of ours," he said. "We've had our
differences. We've had our fights in the past, and we've always
managed to find a way forward. And it's my job as secretary of state
to work with these nations and find a way forward, but never by
compromising our principles and our strong beliefs, but by using the
power of principles to convince others of what we should do in a
collective fashion."
House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde, an
Illinois Republican, said at the outset of the hearing that the
committee was meeting at a time of great peril and great opportunity,
and the relevance of the United Nations and international political
order are at stake.
"The peril is obvious: aggressive regimes -- armed with weapons of
mass destruction, uncontrolled by any domestic political constraints,
and linked to international terrorist networks in a shadow world of
malice where the murder of innocents is considered a noble vocation.
These threaten the very possibility of order in world affairs," Hyde
said. "In Iraq, the world's 58-year experiment with collective
security is being put to the supreme test. If Iraq is permitted to
defy 12 years of United Nations resolutions demanding its disarmament,
then that 58-year experiment in collective security will be, for all
intents and purposes, over."
Hyde said he hoped that Iraqi disarmament could be enforced with the
united support of the U.N. Security Council, but whatever the case, it
is imperative that the United States make certain that effective and
decisive enforcement takes place.
"This peril also contains, in my view, a great opportunity. The
opportunity is to recast the politics of a turbulent region of the
world, so that opportunities for real stability are created. What we
often call 'stability' in the Middle East has been, for the past
half-century, the most volatile instability. The world cannot live
with this instability much longer," Hyde said.
Representative Tom Lantos of California, the committee's ranking
Democrat, said that he was "particularly disgusted by the blind
intransigence and utter ingratitude" of France, Germany and Belgium,
who have blocked a U.S. plan in NATO to provide additional security
for Turkey against an attack from Iraq.
Powell assured the committee that Turkey will be defended. "We have
already determined how to do that," he said. "It would be much better
if NATO would act as an alliance on that and not allow itself to be
tied up in knots by three of the 19 nations."
(The Washington File is a product of the Office of International
Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site:
http://usinfo.state.gov)