STICK WITH THE UN

‘I am in no doubt,’ said the Prime Minister in last Tuesday’s debate in the House of Commons, ‘that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein is serious and it is imminent.’ After reading the dossier on Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction released in advance of that debate, most people will share his sentiment. The dossier provides evidence that Saddam could build chemical or biological weapons in less than one hour, and that he has been trying to acquire from Africa the plutonium he needs to make a nuclear bomb. Sooner or later, if not prevented from doing so, Saddam will acquire nuclear bombs. That prospect is truly terrifying. Nuclear weapons will provide him with an unprecedented capacity to blackmail his neighbours into concessions, and to furnish terrorist groups with nuclear bombs which they can use directly on the United States and Britain.

President Bush believes that this possibility is so appalling that it justifies the United States in mounting an aggressive war to remove Saddam Hussein from power, with or without authorisation from the United Nations. Does Tony Blair? His answers to that question, posed directly to him in the Commons debate, were far from clear. He says that the purpose of action is not to change the regime in Iraq but simply to disarm it. That position is already one step away from the avowed determination of the Bush administration to ‘rid the world of Saddam’. Mr Blair reiterated his hope that the UN would provide authorisation for military action against Iraq. He pointedly did not say whether Britain would join an American invasion regardless of whether or not it was sanctioned by the UN.