Key Democrat urges go slow approach on Iraq; Bush tells Chirac he expects 'firm and effective' U.N. resolution

<br>WASHINGTON (AP) _ Amid fresh calls for caution, President Bush said Friday that the United Nations should be given a chance to force Saddam Hussein to give up his weapons before the United States and

Friday, September 27th 2002, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

WASHINGTON (AP) _ Amid fresh calls for caution, President Bush said Friday that the United Nations should be given a chance to force Saddam Hussein to give up his weapons before the United States and its allies act on their own to disarm him.

``I'm willing to give peace a chance to work,'' Bush said at a Republican campaign fund raiser in Denver while his administration continued to push for a congressional resolution of support for using military force against Saddam's Iraqi regime.

Key Democrat Sen. Ted Kennedy urged the administration to proceed cautiously on war. And trouble brewed for the administration at the United Nations, as well. There, a tough resolution prepared by the United States and Britain to threaten Iraq faces stiff opposition from France, Russia and China, who hold veto power in the U.N. Security Council.

``We are a long way from getting an agreement, but we are working hard,'' Secretary of State Colin Powell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday as he stepped up U.S. diplomacy internationally.

Bush called French President Jacques Chirac on Friday morning and conveyed the United States' determination to ``have a firm and effective'' U.N. resolution, said press secretary Ari Fleischer.

Fleischer said Bush was ``optimistic that America's resolve to deal firmly with Saddam Hussein will soon be echoed in Congress.'' Majority Democrats in the Senate have cleared the calendar to begin debate next week, the spokesman noted, saying ``the legal mechanisms are falling into place.''

Bush, in Denver, conceded that ``there's a steep hill to climb'' in overcoming the threat from Saddam.

``He can either get rid of his weapons and the United Nations can act, or the United States will lead a coalition to disarm this man,'' Bush said to applause from GOP contributors.

``I'm willing to give peace a chance to work. I want the United Nations to work. I want (Saddam) to do what he said he would do. But for the sake of our future, now is the time. ... For the sake of your children's future we must make sure this madman never has the capacity to hurt us with a nuclear weapon, or to use stockpiles of anthrax that we know he has, or VX, the biological weapons which he posseses.''

Partisan skirmishes between the White House and leading Democrats continued unabated.

House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, writing an op-ed piece in Friday's editions of The New York Times, charged that Bush had ``decided to play politics with the safety and security of the American people.'' That mirrored criticism leveled at the president Wednesday by Senate Majority Leader Thomas Daschle, D-S.D.

Asked about this, Fleischer told reporters aboard Air Force One: ``The president urges no one to politicize this debate. This is a very serious matter.''

Meanwhile, Kennedy, a senior Democrat, argued that the administration has failed to make a persuasive case for going to war against Iraq and that the top U.S. priority should be getting U.N. inspectors back in Iraq, not preparing for unilateral military action.

``War should be a last resort, not the first response,'' the Massachusetts senator said in a speech to the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Kennedy said the administration has not laid out to the American people the ``cost in blood and treasure'' of a war with Iraq and ``it is inevitable that a war in Iraq without serious international support will weaken our effort to ensure that Al-Qaida terrorists can never, never, never threaten American lives again.''

In Atlanta, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said removing Saddam from power would be the U.S. goal, not necessarily killing the Iraqi leader.

``If he is on the run, he is not governing Iraq,'' Rumsfeld said.

Three other Democratic senators, Paul Sarbanes of Maryland, John Kerry of Massachusetts and Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, told Powell the White House was asking Congress for unprecedented backing.

The senators did not question a need to get tough with Iraq for blocking U.N. weapons inspections for nearly four years and refusing to disarm.

But they said the congressional resolution the president proposed was far too broad.

For instance, Sarbanes said, it would authorize force against Iraq for refusing to return Kuwaiti prisoners held since the Persian Gulf War in 1990-91.

Kerry told Powell ``you are asking for blanket authority'' and Feingold said ``we are hearing shifting justifications for using force in Iraq.''

Powell tried to placate them, saying the Bush administration was unlikely to use force except if Iraq continued to refuse to get rid of weapons of mass destruction.

A resolution giving the president the authority to go to war should be backed by the broadest coalition possible, Daschle said after meeting Thursday with Senate Democrats. ``We've come some distance. We've got a long way to go before that can be achieved,'' he said.

Senate Republicans said they strongly backed the proposal offered by the White House and felt the president had gone far enough in meeting Democratic concerns about its scope. ``Any further erosion, I think, is going to be a problem,'' Senate Republican leader Trent Lott of Mississippi said.