Bush Urges U.N. to Move Against Iraq

President Bush took to the world stage Thursday, challenging the United Nations to join the U.S. in a drive to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein--and warned that America will go it alone if necessary.

“Iraq has answered a decade of U.N. demands with a decade of defiance,” he said in his address before the General Assembly. “All the world now faces a test, and the United Nations a difficult and defining moment.”

Calling Hussein “a threat to the authority of the United Nations and a threat to peace,” Bush warned that unless the U.N. enforces its many resolutions concerning Iraq, “action will be unavoidable.”

By urging the U.N. to join in action against Hussein’s regime, Bush appeared to be heeding, for now, the calls from many U.S. allies and foreign leaders that his administration work with the world body in a confrontation with Iraq.

Moments before he spoke, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan forcefully made that point again, telling the president and the other gathered world leaders that any response to Hussein’s regime should first have the approval of the United Nations.

But Bush left little doubt that his ultimate aim of effecting a “regime change”--though he was careful not to use the phrase--remained unaltered. If Hussein is left unchecked, the president predicted, “the attacks of Sept. 11 would be a prelude to far greater horrors.”

“We cannot stand by and do nothing while dangers gather,” he said.

Bush’s address, coming only a day after he led the nation’s commemoration of last year’s terrorist attacks, marked a new phase of the war on terrorism.

Asked about the conflicting messages of a president seeking international support and involvement while also articulating possible unilateral action, a senior administration official said Bush “is always going to reserve his options, as president of the United States, to act on behalf of the interests of the United States.”

It was Bush’s first address to the U.N. since November, when he appeared as the leader of a nation victimized by terrorism and calling on leaders to back a war against the Al Qaeda terrorist network and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

On Thursday, the assembled delegates listened attentively to Bush but showed little outward reaction. Their most enthusiastic applause came when the president announced early on that the U.S. would rejoin UNESCO, which it quit 18 years over the agency’s perceived anti-American attitudes.

Leaders were equally cautious after the address, welcoming Bush’s talk of working with the U.N. but warning against a rush to war.

“The choice for us is not between action or inaction, but rather knowing how to act,” French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said.

Iraqi Ambassador Mohammed Douri, who sat passively during the address, said later, “I would have been pleased if the U.S. president would have talked about his true motives behind his speech--revenge, oil, political ambitions and also the security of Israel, and targeting every independent state that would refuse to adhere to the American policy.”

To accompany Bush’s speech, the administration released a 21-page “white paper” listing Iraqi violations of U.N. resolutions. The paper provided allegations dating back to the 1980s, but it was cautious and vague in its discussion of recent intelligence.

In the 25-minute address that exceeded his allotted 15 minutes, Bush methodically made his case against Hussein’s regime, describing it as “a grave and gathering danger.”

To underscore Bush’s growing sense of urgency, a top White House official said after the address that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell would consult here today with more than a dozen foreign leaders about “moving forward” against Iraq.

Bush’s courtship of the world body is noteworthy because he has been widely criticized as a leader inclined to act unilaterally on international issues.

One U.S. ally after another in recent weeks has expressed reservations about a war to unseat Hussein, fearful that such action could destabilize the Middle East and disrupt the U.S.-declared war on terrorism. Their concerns, however, have not dissuaded Bush from his intentions; the president took the opportunity Thursday to strongly make his case to the U.N. for action against Iraq.

In Washington, lawmakers of both parties had urged him to do so, and many on Thursday hailed the president’s appeal.

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) called it “a strong speech” and predicted that it would help the president build an international coalition against Baghdad.

“That international support, I think, is a critical element to our overall prospects for success,” Daschle said.

But Daschle rejected a plea from the Bush administration for a quick congressional vote to support possible action against Iraq, saying that too many diplomatic and military questions remained unanswered.

Republicans, led by Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi and Sen. John McCain of Arizona, said a speedy congressional show of support would strengthen the president’s standing as he seeks to build an anti-Iraq coalition.

Bush also won words of support from former President Clinton. During a chance meeting with reporters in midtown Manhattan, Clinton said he didn’t hear Bush’s speech, but added, “I think going to the U.N. was a good thing.”

In exhorting the world community to act in concert, Bush suggested that the U.N.’s credibility and effectiveness were on the line.

Underscoring his intention to act--unilaterally if necessary--Bush told the General Assembly:

“The United States will make that stand. And, delegates to the United Nations, you have the power to make that stand as well.”

At one point, the president struck an unexpectedly personal note as he made his case against Iraq, reminding delegates that Hussein had been accused in the past of trying to assassinate not only the emir of Kuwait but also “a former American president”--Bush’s father.

Although it was the president’s most detailed and impassioned argument for action against Baghdad, he did not lay out a specific timeline or recommend specific actions by the world body.

A senior administration official told reporters afterward that Bush hopes the Security Council now will determine a course of action.

“We’re open to all kinds of ideas,” the official said.

In his address, Bush focused in some detail on resolutions passed by the council since Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 that require the Hussein regime to destroy any weapons of mass destruction and allow weapons inspectors into the country.

“As we meet today, it’s been almost four years since the last U.N. inspectors set foot in Iraq--four years for the Iraqi regime to plan and to build and to test behind the cloak of secrecy,” he said.

Bush insisted that Iraq must comply as well with the full panoply of other Security Council resolutions.

Those measures, for instance, demand that Iraq stop repressing minorities and political dissidents and renounce terrorism.

Two other resolutions in 1991 demanded that Iraq return all prisoners from Kuwait and other countries in the region, but Hussein has not done so, Bush said. That refusal leaves unaccounted for citizens from Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Egypt, Bahrain and Oman. “One American pilot is among them,” the president added, apparently referring to Navy Capt. Michael Scott Speicher.

Since agreeing to all such demands--as a condition for the cease-fire ending the 1991 Persian Gulf War, during which a U.S.-led coalition drove Iraqi forces out of Kuwait--Hussein has violated every such commitment, Bush said.

“By breaking every pledge--by his deceptions and by his cruelties--Saddam Hussein has made the case against himself,” Bush said.

Behind the scenes, the Bush administration is working on a timetable for action, beginning perhaps with a U.N. resolution that would both toughen the terms of and accelerate efforts to assure that Iraq has no chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

U.S. officials would like the Security Council to adopt a resolution that, within a matter of weeks, would pave the way for weapons inspectors to return to the country.

“We don’t really believe that there needs to be much more time before the U.N. Security Council acts,” a senior administration official said.

The president said his “greatest fear” is that Hussein would acquire the capability to manufacture a nuclear weapon--and then use it or make it available to terrorists.

Unmistakably referring to Iraq, Bush added, “In one place--in one regime--we find all these dangers, in their most lethal and aggressive forms, exactly the kind of aggressive threat the United Nations was born to confront.”

Had it not been for the Gulf War, the president said, Iraq “would likely have possessed a nuclear weapon no later than 1993.”

The president also took note of U.S. reports that Hussein’s regime has recently sought to acquire nuclear technology and said that if Iraq were to succeed, it “would be able to build a nuclear weapon within a year.”

“The first time we may be completely certain he has nuclear weapons is when, God forbids, he uses one,” he said. “We owe it to all our citizens to do everything in our power to prevent that day from coming.”

He also gently tweaked the U.N. by evoking memories of a feckless League of Nations.

“We created the United Nations Security Council so that, unlike the League of Nations, our deliberations would be more than talk, our resolutions would be more than wishes,” Bush said.

“What he came here to do was to challenge the United Nations to not be irrelevant,” a senior administration official said.

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Times staff writers Nick Anderson and Johanna Neuman in Washington contributed to this report.