Terror War Expansion Troubles Allies

U.S. officials put the world’s defense chiefs on notice Saturday that the war against terrorism may soon target Iraq and other states in an “axis of evil,” intensifying fears that Washington is carrying its campaign to avenge the attacks of Sept. 11 too far for its allies.

European lawmakers and defense chiefs at the annual Munich Security Conference couched their reservations in polite diplomatic language, but they made clear that they see the Pentagon’s go-it-alone tendency as alienating trusted European friends and undermining improving ties with former enemies.

President Bush’s reference in his State of the Union message Tuesday to the “axis of evil” spanning North Korea, Iran and Iraq was repeatedly evoked by U.S. officials at the prestigious security forum here as they sounded a drumbeat for extending the war against global terrorism. But since the term “axis” once referred to the troika of Washington’s World War II enemies--Germany, Italy and Japan, now all close U.S. allies--it has given offense to some and caused fear in others.

U.S. delegates, led by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, warned that Washington is committed to stepping up its campaign to eradicate terror whether or not its European allies are willing to do their part.

“What happened on Sept. 11, terrible though it was, is but a pale shadow of what will happen if terrorists use weapons of mass destruction,” Wolfowitz said. Declaring a need to catch the enemy unawares, he said: “We are at war.”

Hammering home a message of you’re-with-us-or-you’re-against-us, Wolfowitz also told the nearly 300 security strategists from 43 countries that their governments confront a clear choice.

“Those that stand for peace, security and the rule of law--the great majority of countries in the world--stand united with us in this struggle between good and evil,” he said. “Those countries that choose to tolerate terrorism and refuse to take action--or worse, those that continue to support it--will face consequences.

“Make no mistake about it: If they do not act, America will,” Wolfowitz warned.

Quoting his boss, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz said self-defense “requires prevention and sometimes preemption.”

Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican and former U.S. presidential contender, further fueled expectations that an expansion of the war might be imminent.

“We in America learned the hard way that we can never again wait for our enemies to choose their moment,” he said of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. “The initiative is now ours, and we are seizing it.”

McCain repeated Bush’s “axis of evil” reference and said nowhere is the need for action more apparent than in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

“The next front is apparent, and we should not shirk from acknowledging it,” McCain said. “A terrorist resides in Baghdad, with the resources of an entire state at his disposal, flush with cash from illicit oil revenues and proud of a decade-long record of defying the international community’s demands that he come clean on his programs to develop weapons of mass destruction.”

Amid such talk, even some of Washington’s strongest supporters here recoiled at the implied criticism of European allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which has largely been sidelined in America’s war on terror.

Karl Lamers, the German lawmaker in charge of foreign policy for the conservative Christian Democrats, expressed dismay Saturday at the U.S. position, saying: “It cannot transpire that you decide and we simply follow. We must be heard.”

Long an unflinching supporter of U.S. policy in Europe, Lamers said after the opening session of the two-day conference that he was “outraged and speechless” at Bush’s resurrection of the loaded term “axis” and the U.S. officials’ attitude.

“There are some words you just don’t use, like ‘axis’ and ‘crusade,’ ” Germany’s coordinator for U.S. relations, Karsten Voigt, commented on the sidelines of the conference. He was putting “axis” in the same category as Bush’s verbal faux pas after Sept. 11 when the president called the war against terrorism a “crusade,” recalling the bloody religious campaigns waged across Europe and the Holy Land during the Middle Ages. European allies have taken pains to avoid casting the drive to eradicate terrorism as a war against Islam.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei B. Ivanov also expressed dismay at menacing words directed at North Korea, Iran and Iraq--all nations with which Moscow has long-standing trade and political ties.

“I’ve seen no evidence to suggest North Korea, Iran or Iraq supports terrorism,” Ivanov told reporters after a separate meeting with Wolfowitz. Their tete-a-tete typified the corridor diplomacy that has made the Munich conference an important event in the drafting of international defense plans.

While Italian delegates refrained from making an issue of the “axis” allusions, commentators in Italy were miffed.

“Unilateralism has become personified--the superhuman Bush versus the axis of evil,” wrote Vittorio Zucconi in Rome’s La Repubblica.

Both North Korea and South Korea also have criticized the reference, with Seoul warning that such comparisons could torpedo its efforts to achieve a rapprochement with the North, and Pyongyang calling Bush’s words “little short of declaring a war.”

British lawmaker Menzies Campbell weighed in here with a warning that European allies would want to see “incontrovertible evidence” that Iraq was plotting a terrorist strike before engaging in preemptive aggression.

Wolfowitz stressed to the delegates the need for U.S. allies to upgrade military technology to shoulder more of the collective defense burden. But he also noted that the United States will continue to look toward “flexible coalitions” to combat terrorism around the world--hinting that NATO has little relevance in campaigns far from its traditional sphere of operations, like the recently deployed anti-terror force in the Philippines.

Outside the massive police cordon around the conference, which is being held in an elegant central Munich hotel, hundreds of antiwar protesters ignored a ban on demonstrations but were contained by police and in any case were too far removed for the participants to notice them.

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Times staff writers Richard Boudreaux in Rome and Barbara Demick in Seoul contributed to this report.