US President George W. Bush warned this evening Iraq has squandered "ample time" to avert war by disarming voluntarily, as the US ordered two more aircraft carriers to the Gulf.
Rebuffing calls from US allies urging Washington to give UN disarmament inspectors in Iraq more time to fulfill their mandate, Mr Bush snapped: "How much time do we need to see clearly that he's not disarming?"
"It is clear to me now that he is not disarming," said the president, who charged that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was using "the tricks of the past" to thwart the inspectors as he did after the 1991 Gulf War.
"He is delaying. He's deceiving. He's asking for time. He's playing hide-and-seek with inspectors," said Bush. "This looks like a re-run of a bad movie. And I'm not interested in watching it."
Adding muscle to US rhetoric, US Defense Secretary Mr Donald Rumsfeld signed deployment orders for two extra carrier battle groups at the weekend and one will be the USS Abraham Lincoln, said Navy spokesman Commander Tom Van Leunen.
The US Navy will now soon have five aircraft carriers in the Gulf, giving US commanders the clout to launch a major air offensive against Iraq, analysts said.
Only the USS Constellation is in the Gulf. But the USS Harry Truman is in the eastern Mediterranean and two others are on orders to be prepared to deploy within 96 hours, and a third is training in the Caribbean.
The US is expected to have more than 150,000 troops in the region by mid-February.
Six days ahead of a key report by weapons inspectors to the UN Security Council meeting that could lead to military action, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said Saddam would never disarm voluntarily.
AFP