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U.S. not to wait much longer

Washington Jan. 18. The U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, said his country would not wait much longer than January 27 to decide whether it should go to war with Iraq, with or without the approval of the U.N. Security Council.

The Iraqi regime had the intent to develop weapons of mass destruction and the capacity to do so and the burden was on it to prove that it did not have such weapons, Gen. Powell told correspondents.

Gen. Powell said that the U.S. President, George Bush, had not taken a decision for war and that he had said he would like to see the problem resolved peacefully. But Mr. Bush believed the international community had an obligation to disarm Iraq forcefully.

Reports of Saddam exile denied

Reports that the Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein, might go into exile are "stupidities", his cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, has said. "These are stupidities... and one of the methods of psychological warfare against Iraq," Mr. Majid, a member of his country's decision-making Revolutionary Command Council, told Al-Jazeera television from Damascus. Iraq has denied repeated reports of secret negotiations to entice Mr. Hussein out of the country to avoid war.

— PTI, AFP

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