U.S. Insists War Up to Iraq

Facing stiffened challenges at home and abroad to a possible war against Iraq, top Bush administration officials said Sunday that the onus for averting bloodshed should instead be on Saddam Hussein.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said in one of two network television appearances that the Iraqi president “lies every day” and has provided U.N. inspectors with a “fraudulent” account of Baghdad’s weapons program.

“The test is, is Saddam Hussein cooperating, or is he not cooperating?” Rumsfeld said. “I mean, you could spend years and years roaming around a country that size trying to find underground tunnels and see where he’s located [weapons].”

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice also stressed in television appearances that Hussein must cooperate with weapons inspectors and demonstrate that he has disarmed if war is to be avoided. Powell traveled to New York on Sunday to discuss the situation with foreign diplomats.

The Bush administration’s difficulty in making a case for war was evident both in Washington and abroad. Antiwar demonstrations in Washington and throughout the country Saturday drew tens of thousands of protesters. On Sunday, two prominent Democrats, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, said they do not believe that President Bush has yet made a persuasive case for attacking Iraq.

Two top U.N. officials arrived in Baghdad on Sunday to meet with Iraqi officials. Chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said that although he has been disappointed by the Iraqi regime’s overall cooperation with arms monitors, proof has yet to emerge of an active program to manufacture chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

Blix said that although inspectors will file what he termed an “update” by a Jan. 27 deadline, he held out the possibility of monitors submitting a more substantial report by March 1.

He said that he viewed as “very serious matters” the discovery last week of nuclear-related documents and 12 warheads suitable for chemical weapons, but that neither struck him as smoking-gun evidence.

Blix’s interpretation came as reluctance, or outright opposition, to a possible U.S.-led war has risen abroad, including in France, Russia and Britain, all of them permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.

After Saturday’s demonstrations in the U.S., smaller-scale protests continued Sunday in Washington, where 16 youths were arrested by local police when they scaled a barricade near the White House.

“If we were to find some weapon of mass destruction, some drastic discovery, I would report immediately [to the Security Council]. We have not done so because we haven’t had any such drastic discovery yet,” Blix said on CNN’s “Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer.”

Asked to define a “smoking gun,” Blix said: “If we were to find a big supply of biological weapons, that would be a smoking gun.... If we were to find chemical weapons, that would also be a smoking gun. If we find missiles that can run 200 kilometers, well, that would also be a smoking gun.

“If you only find documents that indicate something, well, that’s not so smoking.... Much of [the evidence found so far] is more circumstantial,” he said.

Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, met Sunday with Iraqi officials. During the two-hour meeting, Blix said, the Iraqis acknowledged finding four additional empty chemical weapons warheads.

“I think we are making some progress,” ElBaradei said.

The colloquy over how much proof might be needed to trigger an attack unfolded on the television talk shows eight days before the deadline for inspectors to report on Iraq’s compliance with demands that it fully account for any weapons of mass destruction.

The criticisms from Daschle and Kennedy reflected a shedding of reluctance by some Democrats to openly challenge Bush’s policy. Kennedy, appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” called a conflict in Iraq “the wrong war at the wrong time.” He noted that Osama bin Laden apparently is alive and that the terrorist leader’s Al Qaeda network remains active.

“Let’s let the inspectors work,” Kennedy said. “Why rush to war? Why pull the trigger on war today when you have very important needs [at] home, in terms of homeland security? ... Let’s let them see if they can continue to make progress.”

Rumsfeld and other Bush administration leaders portrayed Hussein as imminently dangerous, and they reiterated the president’s position that time is running out for him to cooperate.

“What we have is a lot of intelligence from our country, from other countries, that leads the United States intelligence community to say that [the Iraqis] have a biological weapons program, a chemical weapons program,” Rumsfeld said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Based on that intelligence -- the nature of which Rumsfeld was not asked to describe further -- the secretary said Iraq also has “an active program” to develop nuclear weapons.

“They have been dispersing things throughout the country, hiding them underground,” Rumsfeld said. “They’ve been taking documentation and distributing it in private homes and the like. People don’t do that unless they’re trying to hide what they’re doing.”

Rice cautioned against expecting too much from the U.N. inspectors. She also said Iraq has yet to account for large quantities of mustard gas, anthrax, botulism and other toxins.

“We cannot expect inspectors, in a place that is a completely totalitarian regime ... where they’ve become very, very clever at means of deception, to necessarily walk in and find a weapon,” she said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“All of the evidence to date of false declaration, documents hidden, interfering with reconnaissance flights, trying to put restrictions on reconnaissance flights -- all of the evidence is the Iraqis are not complying. Time is running out,” Rice said.

Still, on the question of whether Iraq’s lack of cooperation alone is ample basis for war, Powell avoided a direct response.

“What I’m saying is that Iraq has an obligation under [U.N. Resolution] 1441 and earlier resolutions to disarm,” he said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “And one way to demonstrate that they are disarmed or are going to disarm is to cooperate with the inspectors and help the inspectors do their job. The issue is not just inspections. The issue is disarmament.... Time is running out.”

As for reports circulating in the Middle East of efforts by Saudi or other Arab leaders to coax Hussein to leave Iraq in exchange for asylum, both Powell and Rumsfeld said they would welcome his departure.

“I would be delighted if Saddam Hussein threw in the towel, said, ‘The game’s up, the international community has caught me, and I’ll just leave,’ ” Rumsfeld said on ABC. He also said that if the senior leadership in Iraq were to be offered immunity from war crimes prosecution upon leaving the country, “that would be a fair trade to avoid a war.”

Powell said he did not know the “truth of these rumors” about exile but encouraged Hussein to listen “carefully” to any overture he might receive.

In New York, Powell met with the foreign ministers of China, Mexico and France to discuss the conflict over Iraq as well as the standoff over North Korea’s nuclear program. He is expected to meet with other members of the Security Council today.

A senior State Department official said exile offers for Hussein had not been discussed and insisted that Powell was not trying to line up support for a second Security Council resolution for military force against Iraq -- at least not yet.

Powell is “focusing the question on disarmament, making clear the president believes this process should not continue forever,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The official was mum on how the American desire not to let the situation go on “forever” could be reconciled with public demands by U.S. allies that Blix and ElBaradei be given the time they say they need to conduct thorough inspections.

The official said Sunday’s talks focused on “supporting” the work of the U.N. inspectors, adding that there was broad agreement that Iraq was not meeting the disarmament demands spelled out in November’s Security Council resolution.

The council is to convene on Jan. 29 to discuss the Blix and ElBaradei reports.

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Times staff writers Sonni Efron in New York and Michael Slackman in Cairo contributed to this report.