Bush starts work to build coalition against Hussein

WASHINGTON -- President Bush on Friday called the leaders of Russia, China and France to seek their support as he tried to build an international coalition against Saddam Hussein, but he appeared, in his initial approaches, to have made little headway in convincing them that the need for action was urgent.

Soon after his talk with Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin spokesman said Putin had expressed "serious doubts that there are grounds for the use of force in connection with Iraq from the standpoint of international law, or from a political standpoint."

France's president, Jacques Chirac, insisted anew that any military action had to come with the approval of the United Nations, and Kofi Annan, the U.N. secretary-general, said after meeting with Chirac that "it would be unwise to attack Iraq now."

Chinese officials said almost nothing about President Jiang Zemin's call from Bush. A two-sentence report by China's official Xinhua News Agency said only that Jiang and Bush discussed "international and regional affairs" and U.S.-Chinese relations. Earlier this week, China welcomed Baghdad's foreign minister to Beijing to reaffirm their countries' "extremely friendly ties."

The president's only specific request of his three counterparts was that they receive the top-level officials he will dispatch to Paris, Moscow and Beijing to present the American case against Hussein, the Associated Press reported.

All three agreed, the White House said.

Teams drawn from the State Department, the Pentagon and the National Security Council will go to the three capitals in early October, a senior U.S. official told the AP.

According to the New York Times, all three leaders indicated they were open to hearing Bush's case for taking some kind of action to hold Iraq to the agreements it signed with the United Nations at the end of the Gulf War. Those agreements call not only for inspections, but also total disarmament.

The leaders all agreed that Iraq posed a threat, according to the newspaper, citing a White House official whom it did not identify.

Also Friday, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain made a parallel series of calls to world leaders as he prepared to fly to the United States to meet with Bush about Iraq. The meeting was scheduled for this afternoon at Camp David, Md.

Meanwhile, the White House pressed for Congress to vote for a resolution supporting action against Iraq before it leaves Washington in October. That timetable was thrown into doubt on Thursday when the Senate majority leader, Tom Daschle of South Dakota, said he was "more concerned about getting this done right than getting it done quickly."

Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, sidestepped a question about whether Bush believes that he reached an informal agreement with congressional leaders on Wednesday to hold some kind of vote before they depart in October for mid-term elections.

The issue arose in part because Sen. Don Nickles, R-Okla., said Friday he had asked the president during a meeting at the White House, "Do you want to get it done before we leave?" and he said, 'Yes.' "

Nickles said, "I think we should honor that request," though some Democrats said they suspected that Bush was setting an artificial deadline to force debate of the issue before the November elections. It is widely assumed here that a debate about Iraq before the elections works in favor of Republicans, while a focus on the economy would benefit Democrats.

The speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, castigated Daschle, who he said asserted that Congress should not act until the United Nations has approved any action against Iraq. Daschle shot back that he never explicitly said congressional approval was linked to U.N. action, though he did tell reporters, "I would hope he would get a Security Council vote of approval, like his father did" before the Gulf War.

"If the international community supports it," Daschle said, "if we can get the information we've been seeking, then I think we can move to a resolution."

Inside the White House, a debate is still under way about exactly what strategy Bush should pursue at the United Nations next week, where he is planning an address on Thursday. He also will be meeting the leaders of Japan, Pakistan and India, along with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, who narrowly escaped an assassination attempt Thursday.

One faction in the Bush administration, led by Secretary of State Colin Powell, has urged that the United States demand one more time that inspectors be let in, fully expecting that Hussein will delay or impede those inspections. Another faction, including Vice President Dick Cheney, has warned that over-involving the United Nations was a trap, and that Hussein would drag out the inspection process, playing a cat-and-mouse game while the West waited.

At his speech Thursday at the United Nations, according to the Washington Post, Bush plans to tell world leaders that unless they take quick, unequivocally strong action to disarm Iraq, the United States will be forced to act on its own.

U.S., British jets hit Iraqi air defense site

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraq on Friday accused U.S. and British planes of striking civilian targets during an air raid southwest of Baghdad and it claimed its antiaircraft batteries chased off the attacking jets.

The U.S. military said Thursday that American and British planes attacked an air defense command and control facility at a military airfield 240 miles southwest of Baghdad. The U.S. Central Command said the strike was a response to an Iraqi attack on allied aircraft patrolling the southern no-fly zone.

"We were fired upon and we responded," said Brig. Gen. John Rosa, the deputy operations director for the Joint Chiefs of Staff at a Pentagon news conference. "We've done that for the last 10 or 11 years and we'll continue to do that."

-- Information from the New York Times, Associated Press and Washington Post was used in this report.

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