Clinton

In this story:

• 'We've gone the extra mile'
• Security Council to meet
• Annan appeals to Baghdad
• Iraq remains defiant
• Related sites and stories

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. President Bill Clinton on Wednesday again urged Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to comply with U.N. weapons inspectors as the Pentagon issued an order deploying additional aircraft and several thousand ground troops to the Persian Gulf region.

Clinton said the United States was prepared to take military action against Baghdad, which on Wednesday reaffirmed its October 31 ban on U.N. weapons inspections unless international economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations were lifted.

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"We continue to hope, indeed pray, that Saddam will comply [with U.N. weapons inspectors]. But we must be prepared to act if he does not," Clinton said during a ceremony marking Veterans Day.

Clinton -- who described Iraq as a country that had invaded its neighbors and even moved against its own Kurdish ethnic community -- said Baghdad had a long history of obstructing the arms inspectors. ( 629 K/57 sec. AIFF or WAV sound)

"We've gone the extra mile" in our diplomatic efforts to resolve the standoff peacefully, Clinton said. He left no doubt that the United States considers the latest confrontation a matter of credibility for the United Nations.

Clinton also said that, with weapons inspectors blocked from doing their jobs, it merely could be a matter of months before Hussein might "act recklessly" again and threaten his neighbors.

The U.N. Security Council was to hold closed-door consultations later Wednesday on the withdrawal earlier in the day of nearly all U.N. weapons inspectors from Iraq.

Chief U.N. weapons inspector Richard Butler said he would tell the council why he had ordered the withdrawal.

Butler

Earlier in the day, Butler told CNN that "as a precautionary measure" he had ordered the inspectors out of Iraq after receiving what he called "some recommendations" from the United States. ( 281 K/ 25 sec. AIFF or WAV sound)

He said 103 inspectors had arrived by plane in Bahrain about 8 a.m. EST Wednesday.

"If Iraq changed its mind, if it decided to obey the law, which it should, our people could be back there in four or six hours and start doing their inspections again, and we could get to the end of this," Butler said.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan -- who avoided a near-certain U.S. military strike against Iraq by going to Baghdad and negotiating a solution to the last crisis in February -- again called on Iraq Wednesday to reverse its non-cooperation decision.

"This would be good for the Iraqi people, for the region and for the world," he said in a statement.

Annan

Annan was expected to cut short his African tour and return to New York by Thursday, according to a U.N. spokesman.

The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Hugh Shelton, told CNN Wednesday that the ball was clearly in Hussein's court. ( 255 K/ 22 sec. AIFF or WAV sound)

He said the purpose of any U.S. military strike would be to degrade Iraq's ability to threaten its neighbors, in a region which was of "vital national interest to the United States" and where the United States had 20,000 military personnel

Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz on Wednesday reiterated that Baghdad wanted the Gulf War sanctions lifted before there could be talk of allowing U.N. weapons inspectors to resume their work.

Prakash Shah, U.N. special envoy to Iraq, said he had met with Aziz to inform him of the pullout of U.N. inspectors.

Asked by reporters about Aziz's reaction, he said: "He is not able to rescind this decision (to end cooperation) unless the Security Council takes some action regarding the sanctions."

Military Affairs Correspondent Jamie McIntyre, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.