Former Secretaries of State Wary of Iraq Attack

Reuters August 23 2002

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger said on Thursday he was not convinced that the time was right for military action against Iraq, while Madeleine Albright, who held the job until last year, said Iraq is "not a direct threat to the United States."

Eagleburger, part of a Republican faction with reservations about attacking Iraq, said that unless the Bush administration has evidence that Iraq is very close to developing weapons of mass destruction, he would not support a unilateral U.S. military campaign to topple President Saddam Hussein.

President Bush has said he supports "regime change" in Iraq and that he will weigh all options, including military force. The debate over Bush's plans for Iraq has heated up this month, but U.S. officials continue to say the president does not have any war plans on his desk.

The debate has split Republicans into two factions -- those who say that delaying action is dangerous and those who say the administration should not act precipitously.

"When we don't have the allies with us, when we haven't very clearly stated what we will do once we've gotten Saddam out of there, assuming we can get him out without too much agony, then we ought to take our time," Eagleburger said in an interview on CNN.

"I'm not at all convinced now that this is something we have to do at this very moment," added Eagleburger, who was secretary of state at the end of the term of former President George Bush, the father of the current U.S. president.

Albright, who served as secretary of state under President Bill Clinton, said Iraq posed a threat to the region, but had been limited by ongoing international sanctions.

"It is not a direct threat to the United States," Albright said on the PBS program "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer."

Albright said there must be a discussion about whether the United States would be better off with "a pre-emptive attack on Iraq from where we are now, where, in fact, I believe that Iraq and Saddam Hussein are contained pretty well within this sanctions box."

FIGHTING TERRORISM OR FIGHTING IRAQ?

"I think the main problem here is whether this is our number one priority or whether our number one priority is fighting terrorism," Albright added. "And it would seem to me that we would be sacrificing a lot of the cooperation that we're getting in the fight against terrorism for what is unclear as a goal in Iraq."

Speaking on the same program, Henry Kissinger, another Republican former secretary of state, said Iraq "threatens the United States by its capacity to threaten its neighbors."

To permit Iraq to develop weapons of mass destruction in violation of U.N. resolutions "seems to me an unprecedented situation justifying unprecedented measures," said Kissinger, secretary of state from 1973 to 1977.

Eagleburger said that the United States would have to use overwhelming force to make sure a military operation succeeds, at a cost of tens of billions of dollars, and would have to stay in Iraq as an occupying force for years to come.

Washington's European and Arab allies and friends are almost universally opposed to military action. Even Britain, the European country usually closest to U.S. foreign policy, said on Thursday its aim in Iraq was to get U.N. weapons inspectors back in.

Kissinger said that "were we to go to war, we have to do it in a manner where even if we don't have support at the beginning, other nations can participate in the process of reconstruction and governance that has to take place afterwards as we have so successfully done in terms of organization in the Balkans."

Eagleburger said he would support Bush wholeheartedly if Bush produced evidence against Saddam.

"I need to be told in no uncertain and clear terms that he now has his finger on a trigger for a nuclear weapon or something of this sort that is close to being developed."

"If the intelligence is clear ... then all the president needs to do is say that to the American people and, at least as far as I am concerned, I will believe him implicitly, and in those circumstances then, yes, we should go," he said.

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