Pressure growing on Bush to change Iraq policy

WASHINGTON Ñ President George Bush has been warned that U.S. policy must be changed to halt Iraq's drive to develop weapons of mass destruction.

The warnings come from both leading members of Congress as well as U.S. strategists. Many of them were critical of the Iraqi policy under the administration of then-President Bill Clinton.

"The sanctions regime and the international coalition against Iraq have completely unraveled," Sen. Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican, said.

Richard Perle, a former Pentagon official in the Reagan administration, agreed. "Does Saddam have weapons of mass destruction," Perle asked. "Yes. But we can't ferret them out and find them, even if the weapons inspectors were to return. How far along is the nuclear program? Probably, further than we think, as we always limit ourselves to what we know."

Many of the critics agreed that Washington has failed to stop Iraq from obtaining components and technology to renew development of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. They said China, Russia and other former East Bloc nations have defied U.S. warnings to stop helping Iraq's military.

But the experts and congressional members disagree over a course of action. Some like Brownback are urging the administration to escalate support for the London-based opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress.

"The threat that Iraq poses will continue as long as Saddam remains in power," Brownback told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing last week that discussed U.S. policy toward Iraq. "We must stop spending money, holding conferences for the opposition, and begin to train and, when necessary, arm them."

Others disagree and assert that Washington must recruit international support for sanctions on those countries that help Iraq. They warn that support for the INC would lead to an increasing U.S. military presence in the Middle East.

"They [INC] have no meaningful support and no military potential beyond dragging the United States into a 'Bay of Kuwait' disaster," Anthony Cordesman, a leading strategist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said.

Instead, Cordesman urged the Bush administration to implement a so-called "smart sanctions" policy that would halt imports of weapons and dual-use equipment that could be used to develop weapons of mass destruction.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the administration's policy is to ease economic sanctions on Iraq while tightening import controls of weapons to the Saddam regime. "We can certainly decide Ñ the international community can decide Ñ what it sells, what it allows across borders, the kinds of inspection regimes, where it is going to deposit its money, and such things," Boucher said. "And that is what we are working with other governments to do to make sure that we have an effective control on weapons and the means to acquire them, including the money and the smuggling, so that we can determine what we want to do with regard to Iraq."

On March 18, Chinese Vice Prime Minister Qian Qichen will visit Washington and discuss policy toward Iraq. U.S. officials said Chinese technicians laid the fiber-optic cables to link radar and anti-aircraft systems around Baghad. These sites were bombed by U.S. fighter-jets last month.