¢ Saudi foreign minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said Sunday the
kingdom would be "obliged to follow through" if the United
States needed bases in the kingdom to attack Iraq under U.N.
authority. The comments, made to to CNN, would mark a
dramatic change in Saudi policy.
¢ President Bush made plain Saturday that the United States is
willing to take Iraq on alone if the United Nations fails to "show
some backbone" by confronting Saddam Hussein. "The U.N. will
either be able to function as a peacekeeping body as we head into
the 21st century, or it will be irrelevant. And that's what we're
about to find out," Bush said Saturday from Camp David, Md. He
added: "Make no mistake about it. If we have to deal with the
problem, we'll deal with it."
¢ President Bush on Thursday warned of a "grave and gathering
danger" posed by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and said the United
Nations must counter the threat or the United States will. In a
toughly worded address to the U.N. General Assembly, the
president called on the world body to insist that Iraq meet
longstanding U.N. demands to scrap its biological, chemical and
nuclear weapons programs.
¢ The German chancellor said he was unmoved Friday in his
opposition to U.S. military action against Iraq despite President
Bush's call for U.N. backing, but Egyptian President Hosni
Mubarak - a key Arab leader - said the White House had opened a
door for settling the crisis. Egypt's foreign minister, meanwhile,
said his government would support a U.S. strike on Iraq if it were
sanctioned by a U.N. Security Council resolution.
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