Bush promises to consult before Iraq attack

President George Bush tonight promised to consult allies before taking any military action against Iraq and asserted that an end to Saddam Hussein’s regime “is in the interests of the world.”

At his Texas home the president said: “How we achieve that is a matter of consultation and deliberation.”

Even so, Bush said the subject of a possible military strike on Iraq did not come up at a meeting on hi ranch with his top military advisers. Instead, he said, long-range Pentagon issues were discussed.

Bush said he would act in a deliberate fashion in deciding how to deal with the Iraqi leader.

“I am a patient man. ... We will look at all options and we will consider all technologies available to us and diplomacy and intelligence,” Bush said.

The president’s meeting with his defence team at his ranch near Crawford came as several prominent Republicans and US allies raised concerns about any imminent attack of Iraq. The gathering at Bush’s Texas ranch fed suggestions that he was discussing war plans with his advisers.

“I know there’s this intense speculation, a churning, a frenzy...but the subject didn’t come up,” Bush said.

“But having said that, we take all threats seriously,” he added. “ We will continue to talk with the people concerned with peace, how to secure the peace.”

“The American people know my position and that is regime change (in Iraq) is in the interests of the world,” Bush said. “How we achieve that is a matter of consultation and deliberation....I am a deliberate person.”

“But one thing is for certain is that this administration agrees that Saddam Hussein is a threat and ...it hasn’t changed,” Bush said.

He said nothing that the Iraqi leader had done or said recently had convinced him otherwise.

Iraq has not allowed UN weapons inspectors back into the country since they left in late 1998.

In advance of the session at the ranch, administration aides had taken pains to portray the meeting as a high-level huddle on the future needs of the military, with no space on the agenda for war planning.

Bush said the discussion centred on ways to “better protect ourselves and our allies from the true threats of the 21st Century” and to “shape a new philosophy in the Pentagon.”

Still, most of the questions during a news conference after the session dealt with Iraq.

As to recent suggestions by several major US allies, including Germany and Canada, that they would not join the United States in a military strike against Iraq unless a better case could be made, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said “the president has not asked them to.”

Rumsfeld, standing alongside Bush, said that the coalition that Bush had assembled in the global war on terrorism “is broad, it’s deep, it’s impressive and it is in fact what his helping the forward progress that we’re achieving.”