US committed to a 'single state' Iraq - Powell
The United States is committed to preserving Iraq as a single nation after any war, Secretary of State Colin Powell has said.
But he again stressed that military action against Saddam Hussein was not inevitable, and said the UN weapons inspectors should be given time to do their work.
If war should come, he said, America and its allies would win decisively.
“They (the Iraqis) have been cooperating with the inspectors, and we will see if that cooperation continues,” he said yesterday.
“There has been some resistance in recent days ... and we are providing more information and intelligence to the inspectors to cue their visits.
“We will see whether that attitude of cooperation continues.”
Powell was asked what would stop Iraq splintering into ethnic mini-states if the US and its allies were to invade and crush Saddam's government.
Iraq could divide into three states based on Shiite and Sunni Islam and the Kurdish ethnic group, he admitted.
“There is that risk,” Powell said. “We are sensitive to it. We do not believe that would be in the interest of anyone.
“So we are committed to keeping Iraq intact and not allowing it to break up into three Balkan-like pieces. And any government we would support would be supported because it had such a commitment.”
Still, Powell said, the first orders of business are the inspections.
“If Iraq does not cooperate, or if we find reason to believe they do have weapons of mass destruction that they have not identified and turned over to the international community, then the president has all of his options available to him,” including another appeal to the United Nations or military action.
Two aircraft carrier battle groups, each with about 10,000 sailors and marines, are within striking distance of Iraq. Two others were ordered last week to prepare for departure on 96 hours’ notice, as were two amphibious warfare groups.
The Navy has accelerated training schedules for other warships. Additional military personnel are heading for the Persian Gulf states Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain, among other locations.
The Iraqi government scoffed at the plans to deploy.
“The beating of war drums, the noise of weapons, the sending of warships, the mobilising of armies will neither frighten nor terrorise the Iraqis,” said the official Iraqi army newspaper, Al-Qadissiya, on Saturday.
Powell, meanwhile, said he could not vouch for the validity of a list that Iraq produced last week of 500 scientists who the Iraqis said worked on mass destruction arms.
He has not seen the list, Powell said, and intelligence specialists still are studying it.
But Powell made another pitch for removing the scientists from Iraq for interrogation about the current state of the country’s armaments.
Told that a Baghdad hotel Saddam’s government has offered for questioning the scientists is bugged, Powell said: “Whether it’s bugged or not is not the issue so much as whether or not the individual is free to talk. The first one who came in had a minder with him.”
