US Sets Late Jan. as Make-or-break Point with Iraq: Newspaper

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, December 20, 2002

US Sets Late Jan. as Make-or-break Point with Iraq: Newspaper

The Bush administration has set the last week in Jan. as the make-or-break point in the long standoff with Iraq, The Washington Post reported on Thursday.

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The Bush administration has set the last week in Jan. as the make-or-break point in the long standoff with Iraq, The Washington Post reported on Thursday.

This is because the administration is increasingly confident that by then it will have collected the evidence to convince the UN Security Council that Iraq is in violation of a U.N. resolution passed last month and to call for the use of force, the newspaper quoted US officials as saying on Wednesday.

According to the newspaper, Hans Blix, the United Nations' chief weapons inspector, plans to tell the Security Council on Thursday that Iraq failed to account fully for chemical and biological bombs and warheads it had assembled as well as materials it bought that could be used to produce more of them, giving a boost to the administration's position.

After Blix offers his preliminary assessment in New York of the arms declaration that Iraq submitted 10 days ago, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell plans to deliver the United States' official reaction at the State Department in which he will declare that Iraq failed to fully disclose its past and present weapons programs.

Explaining the timetable, administration officials are pointing to Jan. 27, when Blix is scheduled to make his first substantive report to the UN Security Council on Iraq's compliance with UN resolutions.

That date falls within the late Jan. to early Feb. window which U.S. military planners have said is the optimum moment to launch an invasion of Iraq, The Washington Post said.

US officials believed that the additional month will also provide enough time for the United States to put together a case against Iraq that Baghdad will not be able to refute and even the most skeptical Security Council members will be unable to ignore.

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