US says destroying missiles won't be enough

9.30am

WASHINGTON - The United States insisted on Friday that if Iraq obeys UN orders to destroy its ballistic missiles, the move will still leave Baghdad far short of UN demands and not stop the march toward a possible war.

President Bush "views this as continued trickery, continued deception. I think it's fair to say that the Iraqi regime is a deception wrapped in a lie inside a fraud," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.

Iraq said it would obey UN orders to destroy its al-Samoud 2 ballistic missiles whose 93 mile range exceeds the UN limit set in 1991.

The US reaction was that the missiles represented only the tip of the iceberg and that Baghdad was trying to mask the fact that it has mass stores of weapons of mass destruction it is required to disarm under UN resolution 1441.

"If we go to war, we are going to go to war because Iraq continues to have 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulin, 1.5 tons of nerve agent, 6,500 aerial chemical bombs," Fleischer said, citing previous UN reports.

The Iraqi move complicated the U.S.-British push to gain Security Council support for a new UN resolution that would set the stage for war.

With France saying there was no Security Council majority for the resolution and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov threatening a veto, US officials still believed it was possible to get the nine needed votes to gain passage from the 15-member Security Council.

Lobbying security council members

Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and others are engaged in an intensive diplomatic effort to gain passage of the resolution.

Bush needs the resolution as a show of international unity behind his drive for a war to disarm Iraq's alleged weapons and topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Bush spoke by phone on Thursday to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who like the leaders of France and China have said inspectors should be given more time.

US officials refused to predict the ultimate outcome, but held out hope of getting to nine votes with no veto from any of the other four permanent members, Russia, China, France and Britain.

"We don't take at this point anybody's vote for granted and we'll see how they vote. We haven't seen anybody definitively take a position on the resolution that is irrevocable," said one senior administration official.

Another official, noting the Nov. 8 passage of resolution 1441 was 15-0, said: "Nobody is counting on 15-0 this time, but we think we can get to nine."

The United States is building a large military force in the Gulf region for a possible war with Iraq, including about 200,000 ground troops. Bush has said the United States will act against Iraq with a coalition of like-minded nations with or without UN backing.

Bush told USA Today in an interview published on Friday that he has agonised over whether to go to war.

"I've thought long and hard about the loss of life," he said. "But I realise and firmly believe that the risk of doing nothing - in other words, if we just sit back and say, 'Well, we hope Saddam Hussein changes' - far exceeds the risk of taking whatever action may be necessary to disarm him."

- REUTERS