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Bush: Assessing Iraq report 'will take some time''Must be credible and accurate and complete'
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. officials will withhold judgment on Iraq's inventory of its weapons of mass destruction programs until the material is examined in detail, a process which "will take some time," President Bush said Saturday. In his weekly radio address, Bush said the Iraqi declaration "must be credible and accurate and complete -- or the Iraqi dictator (Saddam Hussein) will have demonstrated to the world once again that he has chosen not to change his behavior."
Iraq was scheduled to deliver thousands of pages of documents to the United Nations on Saturday, a day ahead of a U.N.-mandated deadline. It displayed documents Saturday to journalists in Baghdad. (Full story) Gen. Hassan Amin, head of the Iraqi agency that deals with weapons inspections, was expected to hand the voluminous declaration to a U.N. diplomat in Baghdad. "We will judge the declaration's honesty and completeness only after we have thoroughly examined it, and that will take some time. The declaration must be credible and accurate and complete, or the Iraqi dictator will have demonstrated to the world once again that he has chosen not to change his behavior," Bush said. Iraq says it has no weapons of mass destruction in violation of U.N. resolutions that ended the Persian Gulf War in 1991. The United States and Britain say that's not true, that U.S. officials say they have intelligence to support their contention. After more than a week of U.N. weapons inspections, "We are not seeing the fundamental shift in practice and attitude that the world is demanding," Bush said. He said Baghdad's communications with the United Nations have been "grudging and conditional," and it continues to fire on U.S. and British aircraft in the "no-fly" zones over Iraq. "It is not enough for Iraq to merely open doors for inspectors. Compliance means bringing all requested information and evidence out into full view, to show that Iraq has abandoned the deceptions of the last decade," Bush said. "Any act of delay or defiance will prove that Saddam Hussein has not adopted the path of compliance, and has rejected the path of peace."
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