'Disarm Iraq or US will go it alone' warns Bush

US president George Bush warned the UN General Assembly yesterday that America would go to war against Iraq unless the UN forced Saddam Hussein to disarm.

Bush said the Iraqi President has engaged in a "decade of defiance" of post-Gulf War demands from the United Nations by developing weapons of mass destruction.

"Saddam Hussein's regime is a grave and gathering danger," he told a General Assembly that included many sceptical member nations. President Bush challenged the world body to act swiftly on a new Iraq resolution or face the prospect of possible unilateral action by the United States.

"The Security Council resolutions will be enforced the just demands of peace and security will be met or action will be unavoidable," Bush said. "And a regime that has lost its legitimacy will also lose its power. If Iraq's regime defies us again, the world must move deliberately and decisively to hold Iraq to account. The purposes of the United States should not be doubted."

Iraq's desire to acquire nuclear weapons topped a list of accusations against Baghdad and Bush warned that, if an emboldened regime were to supply these weapons to terrorist allies, the attacks of September 11 would be a prelude to far greater horrors.

Senior US officials said Washington wanted a short deadline for compliance, or Baghdad would face the consequences. A senior aide said Bush was by no means giving up his options for dealing with Iraq, including military force.

In contrast, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the General Assembly that only the United Nations could authorise the use of force in cases that go beyond straightforward self-defence.

Insisting that Iraq's refusal to abide by previous resolutions threatened United Nations' authority, Bush said the United States would work with other members of the UN Security Council on a new resolution.

Bush's speech completed the expansion of his war on terrorism, first launched after the September 11 attacks against Osama bin Laden, to a campaign to remove what he has called "tyrants" such as Saddam.

Senior Bush aides said Washington felt time was running out: "We don't need months. They know what they have to do, we know what they have to do."