U.S. Pushes Its Iraq Message At NATO

The United States said on Wednesday it was getting its message across to NATO allies on the threat posed by Iraq but alliance partner Russia said it was more at risk from rebels based in Georgia than from Baghdad.

"Everyone is on notice. All now have a clear understanding of the threats that are posed," U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told reporters.

The alliance's 19 defense ministers discussed Iraq over dinner on Tuesday after listening to a classified briefing by U.S. intelligence officials on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's efforts to equip himself with weapons of mass destruction.

The ministers, mostly from European states hesitant to back Washington's drive to remove Saddam from power, also received British Prime Minister Tony Blair's dossier asserting that Iraq could launch a non-conventional attack within 45 minutes.

Rumsfeld said it was unrealistic to expect unanimity from the international community.

"The thought that they all should agree at the same moment to contribute in exactly the same way is nonsensical," he said at the press conference. "It never has happened. It never will happen.

"Countries ought to be able to decide what they can do to help," he added. "Some countries are doing it publicly, some are private, but all nations that are involved in this coalition are sharing intelligence, and it's that intelligence information that is helping us track down terrorists wherever they are."

The campaign to convince Europeans Saddam is an urgent threat comes as the U.S. tries to prepare a Security Council resolution to stiffen a weapons inspections regime that will be acceptable to veto-wielding United Nations partners.

Russia and France have not accepted the need for the resolution to include an ultimatum which if defied would authorize the U.S. to launch a devastating attack on Iraq that would end the rule of Saddam.

"The president has not made an announcement with respect to his conclusions as to what ought to be done with respect to Iraq," Rumsfeld said. "Therefore, one ought not to be surprised that there isn't a coalition."

Spain said the U.S. presentation at the two-day informal NATO meeting in Warsaw was "very interesting and convincing."

"We now expect action by the United Nations and perhaps a new resolution," said Spanish Defense Minister Federico Trillo.

But Russia, attending the second-day of the NATO meeting in its new role as an alliance partner, said Iraq was less worrying than the attacks it says are being launched on it by Chechen rebels hiding with impunity in neighboring Georgia.

"We have incontrovertible proof that the Georgian authorities are not taking effective action against this international terrorism," Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov told Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita on Tuesday.

"Our president has openly said that if Russia is again a victim of aggression we will have no other option but to strike and destroy the terrorists," he told the respected daily.

Russian media has speculated that Moscow is seeking a free hand from Washington to wipe out Chechen hideouts in lawless areas of Georgia in return for backing U.S. moves on Iraq in the Security Council, where Russia holds a veto.

Georgia has appealed for U.S. support against Russia and says the thousand troops it has sent to the remote Pankisi gorge neighboring Russia are making headway in ousting rebels. Russia scoffs at Tblisi's efforts as insufficient.

Ivanov expressed little urgency in tackling the Iraq issue, saying weapons inspectors, which Baghdad has said can return to Iraq and have unfettered access, should be allowed some months to assess Iraqi denials they are producing deadly weaponry.

"I believe a few months of work will be quite sufficient to reach a final verdict," said Ivanov.

He advocated a twin-track approach of weapons inspections running concurrently with Security Council discussion. The U.S. worries that without a deadline backed by the threat of force Iraq will string out weapons inspections as in the past.

The U.N. sent inspectors to Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War to destroy Baghdad's non-conventional arsenal and prevent it rebuilding a chemical, biological and nuclear weapon capability.

President Bush argues that since the inspectors left in 1998 in the face of Iraqi obstruction Saddam has been trying to gain weapons of mass destruction and would not hesitate to use them.