The Hindu : Not a matter of time, but of victory: Bush

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Mar 28, 2003

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International

Not a matter of time, but of victory: Bush

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

Washington March 27. The U.S. President, George Bush, and the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, have said that coalition forces are ``advancing by the day'' in Iraq and that the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, will be removed from power.

``Iraq will be disarmed of weapons of mass destruction. And the Iraqi people will be freed. That is our commitment'', said Mr. Blair at a joint press conference in Camp David, 100 km from the capital.

Mr. Blair arrived at the Catoctin Mountain Retreat on Wednesday for talks with Mr. Bush. Both the leaders pushed for immediate restoration of the United Nations' `oil-for-food programme'The British Prime Minister said that he and Mr. Bush agreed on the role of U.N. but a ``huge amount of details'' need to be worked out in post-conflict Iraq and that this could not be done through press conferences or megaphone diplomacy. Mr. Bush was asked whether the conflict would continue for weeks or months. ``However long it takes to win, however long it takes to achieve our objective, it's not a matter of time, it's a matter of victory'', he said.

For his part the British leader said: ``It is not set by time. It's set by the nature of the job.'' The two met at Camp David amidst doubts that there are deep divisions between the U.S. and the U.K. on the U.N.'s role in Iraq after the conflict.

The impression here is that Mr. Blair wanted the world body to play an active role, that went beyond managing humanitarian assistance. But Washington does not want the U.N. to be meddling in the political scheme of things; nor does the Bush administration want an administrator for Iraq to be appointed by the Security Council.

The White House has said that the President's judgment was that the United Nations should take part but that the ``exact role'' is something that would have to be discussed.

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