U.S. Prepared to Strike Iraq on Its Own, Albright Says

Sweeping aside the concerns of hesitant allies, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright warned Wednesday that the United States is ready to launch military strikes against Iraq on its own if necessary to force Baghdad’s cooperation with United Nations weapons inspectors.

“While we prefer always to go multilaterally and have as much support as possible, we are prepared to go unilaterally,” she told a news conference.

Removing doubts about U.S. intentions only hours before departing on a six-day trip to Europe and the Middle East, Albright said that she had no plans to lobby allies to broaden support for potential airstrikes or other military action to force Iraq to give up its efforts to produce chemical and biological weapons. “I’m not going anywhere to seek support, but to explain our position,” she said.

While adding that “the diplomatic string is running out” on efforts to persuade Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to resume cooperation with U.N. weapons inspectors, Albright did leave a glimmer of hope that a peaceful solution remains possible.

Noting the presence of a senior Russian diplomat in Baghdad attempting to broker a plan that would open potential weapons sites to U.N. inspectors, Albright said, “We’ll have to wait to see what the response is, but whatever the response, my response is going to be that we need to have unfettered, unconditional access.”

She also said the goal of military force would be to coerce Hussein to comply with the U.N., not to replace him.

Her tough talk, which came amid growing discomfort in some European capitals with the U.S. hard line, underscored just how far the Clinton administration’s policy has evolved from the earlier U.S. strategy of building broad coalitions to pressure Hussein, through international isolation, to give up his quest to produce weapons of mass destruction. The United States also stressed such diplomacy up until the 1991 Persian Gulf War, which followed Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. Indeed, in stormy encounters with Iraq throughout the 1990s, the U.S. has never issued a declaration similar to the one by Albright on Wednesday.

But administration officials have grown increasingly frustrated with Hussein, who in brazen violation of U.N. resolutions has refused inspectors access to dozens of sensitive sites, including sprawling “presidential palaces” that may play a role in suspected Iraqi programs to build chemical and biological weapons.

The crisis intensified with the publication Tuesday of remarks by Richard Butler, an Australian and the chief U.N. weapons inspector, who was quoted as saying that Hussein now has enough killer germs, such as anthrax and botulin toxin, as well as the missiles to deliver them, “to blow away Tel Aviv.”

Albright’s remarks follow equally strong warnings to Hussein on Tuesday by President Clinton in his State of the Union address and by Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott in the Republican response to Clinton’s speech. The senator from Mississippi on Wednesday announced a congressional resolution urging Clinton to take “all necessary and appropriate actions” to respond to the Iraqi threat.

The statements together were seen as a signal to Baghdad that the scandal surrounding Clinton’s alleged affair with a White House intern had neither distracted the administration from the crisis in Iraq nor eroded GOP support for military action if necessary.

But the distance between the U.S. and key European countries on the issue was on full display Wednesday when the foreign ministers of France and Russia agreed after meeting in Paris that the acid test for military response still hadn’t been met.

“The recourse to force . . . is not desirable and will not solve the problem confronting us,” French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine said. Yevgeny M. Primakov, his Russian counterpart who was in Paris for talks with the French minister and President Jacques Chirac, echoed the sentiment, saying: “The use of force is not a solution.”

Those comments, with disparaging criticisms of Butler’s sensational claims, showed there was no unanimity among the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council--the U.S., Russia, France, China and Britain--on what to do next.

Indeed, French and Russian officials--whose nations have old ties and big economic interests in the region--appeared to shrug off Butler’s comments. “Mr. Butler departed a bit from his role,” Vedrine said, adding that the U.N. official’s dire analysis isn’t fully in keeping with the Security Council assessment of the situation.

France and Russia, though, seemed mystified at Hussein’s spurning of an earlier deal they had pushed through--overcoming the skepticism of the U.S. administration in the process--to increase the number of U.N. weapons inspectors, a move that among other things would have reduced the proportion of Americans on Butler’s staff.

Albright, meanwhile, praised Butler in her news conference for having “done a remarkable job” and said his comments made “clear how important it is for [U.N. weapons inspectors] to have unfettered, unconditional access.”

Albright is to arrive in Paris for talks today with Vedrine, then meet Primakov on Friday in Madrid. In addition, Bill Richardson, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., is scheduled to leave today on an eight-day tour of eight countries to explain the U.S. hard line on Iraq.

Before heading to the Middle East, Albright is to meet in London with British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, whose country is the only one of the Security Council’s “Big Five” to fully support the U.S. position on the use of force against Hussein. “You’ve got a dictator who is prepared to abuse his power, to launch war upon his neighbors, and if he isn’t stopped--and stopped soon--the effects will be worse for the whole of the world in the long term,” British Prime Minister Tony Blair told Parliament on Wednesday.

Primakov, a fluent speaker of Arabic with long ties to the region, dispatched his deputy, Viktor Posuvalyuk, to Baghdad to try to broker a compromise that would allow inspections of presidential palaces and other sites now declared off limits by Iraq. Posuvalyuk met Wednesday with Hussein, and the official Iraqi News Agency reported that the Russian visitor carried a letter from President Boris N. Yeltsin.

Marshall reported from Washington and Dahlburg from Paris. Times staff writers Craig Turner at the United Nations and Carol J. Williams in Moscow contributed to this report.