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Iraq | ||||
Bush, Blair, Aznar to Meet About Iraq | ||||
2003-03-14 | ||||
On the brink of war, President Bush will travel this weekend to the Azores Islands in the mid-Atlantic Ocean to confer with his two closes allies on Iraq. Topping the agenda at the hastily arranged summit among Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar will be strategies for salvaging the trio's troubled war resolution at the U.N., said senior U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Screw the French, on to Baghdad!"
"Tony, your troops take the right flank into the southern oil fields, We'll swing left and push to Baghdad. Jose, you get to attack Paris." Presidential press secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters Friday that Bush will leave Sunday. Bush has said that without the United Nations, he would form a "coalition of the willing," which U.S. officials say would include Britain and Spain. As U.N. diplomats predicted failure for Bush's resolution, the president gave aides the go-ahead for the U.S.-Britain-Spain summit. The Azores Islands are a traditional mid-Atlantic refueling stop about 900 miles west of Portugal. Portugal is among the countries that have offered Bush logistical support in any war in Iraq, and it granted U.S. permission to use Lajes Field air base in the island chain. News of the meeting first surfaced Thursday morning, but officials said planning had stopped, only to confirm hours later that talks had resumed amid tense discussions at the United Nations. The Bush administration will continue "working hard to see if we can take this to a vote," Secretary of State Colin Powell said. But he pointedly set a time frame that suggested the diplomatic effort would not extend beyond the weekend.
Too late, Turkey. See ya in Kurdistan. Powell consulted several times Thursday with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and Spanish Foreign Minister Ana Palacio, whose government jointly sponsored the new resolution with the United States. Powell said for the first time Thursday that the resolution might be withdrawn. "We are working hard to see if we can take this to a vote ... but we haven't excluded any of the other obvious options that are out there," he told a House Appropriations subcommittee. He said the options under consideration included "to go for a vote and not to go for a vote." Britain proffered a compromise, a series of tests or "benchmarks" to measure Iraq's sincerity about disarming. But France opposed the move and Iraq exulted it could end the political career of the British prime minister. Bush and Blair obviously "have lost the round before it starts while we, along with well-intentioned powers in the world, have won it," the popular daily Babil, owned by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's son, Odai, said in a front-page editorial. Suggesting a decision on the resolution was close at hand, Powell told the subcommittee "all the options that you can imagine are before us and we'll be examining them today, tomorrow and into the weekend." But he did not draw back from threatening Iraq with war. "The day of reckoning is fast-approaching," Powell said. Next week the 101st will have all their equipment. Tick..tick. | ||||
Posted by:Steve |