President Bush called yesterday for the North Atlantic Alliance to enlarge beyond the historic expansion due to be formalised today and rebuked key NATO members sceptical of disarming Iraq by force.
"The world needs the nations of this continent to be active in the defence of freedom, not inward-looking or isolated by indifference," Mr Bush told the Prague Atlantic Student summit.
Today, the alliance will invite Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Romania to join NATO, in theory at its next summit in 2004. If all do join, it will represent the alliance's largest expansion since its formation in 1949.
Ireland is being represented at the gathering by the Minister of State for European Affairs, Mr Dick Roche, who tomorrow will attend a meeting of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council.
The meeting will be chaired by the NATO Secretary-General and former UK defence secretary, Lord Robertson. The council's function is to co-ordinate the Partnership for Peace, of which Ireland is a member, and the Alliance.
In a speech whose message is expected to be reflected in Mr Bush's comments to the summit proper, the US President said fighting global terrorism was now the alliance's top challenge.
"The Soviet Union is gone, but freedom still has enemies. We're threatened by the spread of chemical and biological and nuclear weapons, which are produced by outlaw regimes and could be delivered either by missile or terrorist cell.
"To meet all of this century's emerging threats, from terror camps in remote regions to hidden laboratories of outlaw regimes, NATO must develop new military capabilities.
"Ours is a military alliance and every member must make a military contribution to that alliance. And because many threats to NATO members come from outside of Europe, NATO forces must be organised to operate outside of Europe. We must develop new capabilities and we must strengthen our will to use those capabilities."
The US yesterday formally invited 50 countries to join a coalition to fight President Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, should that become necessary.
The UN chief weapons inspector, Dr Hans Blix, returned to Cyprus after two days' discussions in Baghdad. The Iraqis, who have consistently denied possession weapons of mass destruction, promised the Blix team full co-operation.
Mr Bush warned the Iraqi leader that he must co-operate fully.
"We're threatened by terrorism, bred within failed states. It's present within our own cities," he said, describing Iraq as an outlaw nation that possessed weapons of mass destruction while denying it through 10 years of deception.
But that situation would not be allowed continue. "We now call an end to that game of deception and deceit and denial. Saddam Hussein has been given a very short time to declare completely and truthfully his arsenal of ter- ror. . .Should he again deny that this arsenal exists, he will have entered his final stage with a lie, and deception this time will not be tolerated. Delay and defiance will invite the severest of consequences," he said.
As US fighters patrolled threatening skies over Prague, Mr Bush likened the threat posed by Iraq in this century to the Nazi armies and Communist legions of the last one and summoned NATO partners to action. "Ignoring dangers or excusing aggression may temporarily avert conflict, but they don't bring true peace," he said,
At the summit, NATO leaders are expected to endorse the creation of a 21,000-strong rapid response force to help the Alliance remould itself to cope with new security dangers outside Europe after the September 11th, 2001, attacks on the US.
Britain's armed forces 'running on empty'; Iraqi opposition to meet in