Iraq May Have A-Bomb in Year, Cheney Warns

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said Sunday that an Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait would not solve the Persian Gulf crisis because it is “only a matter of time” before Iraq acquires the ability to threaten the world with both nuclear and biological weapons.

Suggesting that Iraq may be less than a year away from manufacturing a “very crude” nuclear device, Cheney said that “aggressive” sanctions will have to be maintained against the regime of President Saddam Hussein even after the question of Kuwait is resolved.

“If he (Hussein) were to come into compliance and withdraw from Kuwait, you are still going to have to worry about the problem of his acquisition of sophisticated weapons,” Cheney said in an appearance on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

“That’s going to require a far more aggressive set of sanctions than we’ve seen up till now,” the secretary added. “That means the sanctions won’t go totally away.”

Echoing the new emphasis that the Bush Administration is placing on Iraq’s attempts to acquire nuclear weapons, Cheney and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft both suggested in separate interviews Sunday that time may be working against the coalition opposing Iraq.

“It’s not clear whose side time is on,” Cheney said, adding that economic and political pressures could begin to affect the anti-Iraqi resolve of financially hard-pressed coalition partners such as Egypt, Turkey and the governments of Eastern Europe.

“I don’t think anybody’s eager for military action, but neither are they eager to have this drawn out over an indefinite period of time,” Scowcroft said on ABC’s “This Week with David Brinkley.” “There’s a common feeling . . . that it needs to be brought to an end.”

Secretary of State James A. Baker III is going to the United Nations later this week to seek Security Council approval for a resolution authorizing the use of force to compel Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait.

On Sunday, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh warned that the resolution would be “a very dangerous development that would threaten the entire region,” the Washington Post reported. Yemen assumes the council’s rotating presidency Saturday, putting it in a position to use parliamentary maneuvers to stall consideration of the resolution.

Also this week, hearings on the Administration’s gulf policy will be held on Capitol Hill, where Democrats have voiced growing concern at what appears to be President Bush’s increasing impatience with sanctions and his willingness to consider using force to oust Iraqi troops from Kuwait.

Appearing on the same program with Cheney, Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) said he is alarmed by the “attitude of inevitability” that appears to be spreading through Washington concerning the possibility of war with Iraq.

Arguing that more time is needed “to determine whether or not the sanctions will have their desired effect,” Mitchell said that “the best course is to stay the course” originally set out by Bush when the United States organized the world community behind sanctions after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on Aug. 2.

Scowcroft, however, argued that Iraq’s attempt to acquire nuclear weapons poses too great a risk for the world to wait the one or two years that most experts say will be required for sanctions to really work. Letting sanctions “run a year or two years or whatever raises the possibility that we could face an Iraq armed with nuclear weapons, which would dramatically change the character of any conflict,” Scowcroft said.

Cheney said intelligence reports indicate that Hussein is working “very hard” to become a nuclear power, and that “it’s only a matter of time until he acquires nuclear weapons and the capability to deliver them.” That has to be “an element of concern as we decide how to deal with the problem,” he added.

Most experts estimate that Iraq is anywhere between two and 10 years away from developing a nuclear device. Cheney conceded that experts disagree in their estimates of how long it will take Iraq to develop a bomb, but he said “worst-case” intelligence assessments indicate that Iraq could be less than a year away from developing a “crude” nuclear device.

“It wouldn’t be anything you could deliver from an airplane. It wouldn’t be anything that would be weaponized in the sense that we think of a nuclear weapon. But it would be capable of doing some damage, of producing some kind of a yield,” Cheney said.

Bush first raised the specter of Iraq posing a nuclear threat when he visited U.S. troops stationed in Saudi Arabia over Thanksgiving. Since then, Administration officials, stung by criticism that they have not been doing a very good job of articulating the reasons for the troop buildup or of convincing the American public of the need to confront Iraq, have been stressing the more ominous threat that Iraq could pose if it is allowed to obtain nuclear weapons.

Mitchell, however, noted that the United States has long known of Iraq’s nuclear weapons program but always looked the other way because of Iraq’s value as a counterweight to Iran.

The majority leader, who in recent days has emerged as one of the leading Democrats urging restraint in the crisis, also criticized Bush for meeting with Syrian President Hafez Assad in Geneva earlier this week.

“It was clearly a mistake . . . a serious misjudgment by the President,” Mitchell said of the meeting with Assad.