US: Former US secretary of state Mr James Baker warned yesterday against unilateral US action in Iraq amid increasingly heated debate over whether Washington should use force to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
"Although the United States could certainly succeed, we should try our best not to have to go it alone, and the president should reject the advice of those who counsel doing so," Mr Baker wrote in the New York Times.
"The costs in all areas will be much greater, as will the political risks, both domestic and international, if we end up going it alone or with only one or two other countries," added Mr Baker, who was diplomatic chief for former president Mr George Bush during the Gulf War.
Mr Baker argued that the only realistic way to effect regime change in Iraq was through massive use of military force, including the occupation of Baghdad and installation of a successor government.
According to the former secretary of state, the US should seek a new UN Security Council resolution requiring Iraq to submit to intrusive inspections anytime, anywhere, with no exceptions and authorising all necessary means to enforce it.
Yet no new Security Council resolution is needed to press Iraq to allow in UN weapons inspectors, chief UN weapons inspector Mr Hans Blix argued.
Mr Blix, asked about Mr Baker's suggestion that such a resolution would be useful, said on NBC television: "On the inspection side, we do what the Security Council tells us.
"We don't need any more" resolutions on inspection. "The problem is that Iraq has not complied," Mr Blix said. Asked about how inspectors were originally told to leave Iraq, Mr Blix noted "it is true that it was not Iraq that ordered the inspectors out," but rather Mr Richard Butler, who led the inspections delegation.
US officials charge Saddam Hussein would not hesitate using weapons of mass destruction against US interests and US allies, if he is given a chance.
But the past two weeks have seen Republican heavyweights such as former national security adviser Mr Brent Scowcroft, ex-secretary of state Mr Lawrence Eagleburger, Senator Chuck Hagel and Representative Dick Armey voice concern that a unilateral US military operation against Baghdad could trigger an explosion of anti-American sentiment in the region.
Senator Hagel, a longtime friend of Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, and fellow Vietnam vet, told Newsweek: "It is interesting to me that many of those who want to rush this country into war and think it would be so quick and easy don't know anything about war.
"They come at it from an intellectual perspective versus having sat in jungles or foxholes and watched their friends get their heads blown off. I try to speak for those ghosts of the past a little bit."
Meanwhile, the latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup opinion poll showed that public support from a US ground invasion of Iraq slipped from 74 per cent last November to 53 percent now.
Only 20 per cent of those surveyed favoured sending troops to topple Saddam Hussein without allied support. - (AFP)
A Qatar-based Islamic website reported yesterday that its correspondent based in Jalababad, in eastern Afghanistan, had obtained a copy of a letter written just weeks ago by Osama bin Laden.
The letter, a copy of which was carried on the website, praised Afghanistan because it had repelled invaders in the past.
"We shall soon see - God the Almighty willing - the fall of the countries of infidelity headed by the tyrant America, which has trampled on all human values and violated all limits, and which knows no logic apart from that of power and holy struggle (Jihad)," the letter said.
The letter, written in Arabic, was not dated and no independent analysis of the handwriting could be obtained. No event was cited in the letter to suggest it had been written recently.
One Arabic linguist said the note contained some elementary mistakes that were unlikely to have been made by someone of bin Laden's education.