Nuclear weapons nearly ready

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has secret information supporting its claims that Saddam Hussein poses an unacceptable threat to the world and is close to developing nuclear weapons, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday.\nPresident Bush could disclose the information through upcoming congressional hearings on Iraq, Rumsfeld hinted at a Pentagon press conference.\nDemocrats on Capitol Hill urged Bush to be more forthcoming.\n"I think most Democrats believe the president has yet to make the case for taking action in Iraq," Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., told reporters.\nBush plans to discuss Iraq in a White House meeting Wednesday with top Republican and Democratic leaders from both houses of Congress. Rumsfeld is also scheduled to discuss Iraq and the war on terrorism in separate closed-door sessions with members of the House and Senate.\nBoth Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell dismissed Iraq's latest offer -- relayed by Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz -- to let U.N. weapons inspections resume, suggesting it was just a ploy.\n"It's the con that the Iraqi regime -- and especially Mr. Tariq Aziz -- have been pulling on the international community for years," Powell said.\nAziz said Iraq was willing to discuss the return of weapons inspectors, but only if sanctions ended and Iraq regained sovereignty over all its territory, eliminating no-fly zones created after the 1991 Gulf War and enforced by U.S. and British warplanes.\n"If you want to find a solution, you have to find a solution for all these matters, not only pick up one certain aspect of it," Aziz said at an international development conference in Johannesburg, South Africa. "We are ready to find such a solution."\n"Tariq Aziz knows perfectly well what must be done," Powell told reporters as he flew to that South Africa meeting. "For years, he has been getting on television and manages to have reported without comment his assertion that they have no such weapons, which is nonsense -- utter nonsense."\nRumsfeld likened it to "a dance they engage in. And then you'll find at the last moment, they'll withdraw that carrot or that opportunity and go back into their other mode of thumbing their nose at the international community."\nAsked what evidence the administration has that Iraq is close to developing a nuclear weapon, as Vice President Dick Cheney asserted last week, Rumsfeld said, "I'll leave that for the coming days and weeks."\nHe said it is already publicly known that Iraq wants to acquire nuclear weapons, that nuclear technologies have spread in recent years and that Iraq has ways of obtaining such materials.\n"And we know some other things, but those are the kinds of things that would come out if and when the president decides that he thinks it's appropriate," Rumsfeld said.\nWhite House aides have said repeatedly that Bush has not decided what to do about Iraq.\nRumsfeld also referred to "documentation" that Bush might disclose to bolster his case.\n"What the president wants to do, and will do, in his own time, is to provide information he feels is important with respect to any judgment he decides to make" about taking action against Iraq, Rumsfeld said.\nIn London, Prime Minister Tony Blair said his government hoped to publish in the next few weeks a dossier of evidence on Saddam's efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction.\nRumsfeld noted that while inspectors have been banned for years from Iraq, the regime has kept its nuclear scientists working.\n"One has to assume they've not been playing tiddlywinks, and that they have been focusing on nuclear weapons," Rumsfeld said, adding that Iraq was close to producing a nuclear weapon before the 1991 Gulf War.\nThe United States wants Iraq to let United Nations weapons inspectors return without conditions, Rumsfeld said.\nWhite House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the United States would regard the return of inspectors as a "first step" that would not necessarily alter Bush's view of the situation.\n"The issue is whether or not Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction," Fleischer said. "The inspectors are a means to that end, and the policy of this government has been that regime change will make the world a safer, more peaceful place."\nSenate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., said he doubts much good would come from returning weapons inspectors to Iraq.\n"But I have no objection to a continued effort to get the United Nations to insist on these weapons inspectors and make it clear to the world that he (Saddam) continues to refuse to cooperate and do the right thing," he said.\nMany U.S. allies have opposed Bush's stated plan to bring about "regime change" in Iraq.\nDaschle said international support for a U.S. invasion may not be "absolutely essential," but there are risks in alienating America's friends.\n"There would be a huge price to pay if we act unilaterally, especially if it's against the wishes of virtually every one of our allies around the world," he said.