Bush says he is the man for the crisis

PRESIDENT George Bush yesterday tried to get Americans to rally around the flag in defiance of Saddam Hussein - but without being pushed into a new bombing offensive. Dick Cheney, the US Defense Secretary, said US military action against Iraq to enforce United Nations resolutions was not imminent. 'The crisis over the Agriculture Ministry has been defused,' he said.

Opinion polls show, however, that if President Bush did decide to act against Iraq he would have broad public support. A new Gallup poll shows Americans support military action against Iraq by 70 per cent to 24 per cent and favour the overthrow of President Saddam by 67 per cent to 28 per cent.

The US has decided not to send a third aircraft carrier to the Gulf region as previously planned because of the reduction in tension between Iraq and the UN, defence officials said yesterday. However, the Defense Department announced that US troops would hold 17 days of war games in Kuwait, beginning next Monday, to emphasise commitment to security in the Gulf.

Mr Bush has been quick to capitalise on the need for a US president experienced in foreign affairs. He described himself as the man best prepared to respond when the phone rings late at night 'carrying news of the coup in a powerful country or asking how we would stand up to the Baghdad bully. The American people need to know that the man who answers that phone has the experience, the seasoning, the guts to do the right thing. I believe I am that man.'

Other Republican leaders were quick to elaborate on the same theme. John Engler, the Governor of Michigan, said that in a 'world of unexpected danger, America cannot afford the untried and untested Bill Clinton'.

These are predictable but dangerous tactics for the President because the crisis over the Agriculture Ministry proved, if anything, that the administration does not know how to cope with a resurgent President Saddam.

While the US media at first reported the resolution of the crisis as stemming from a capitulation by Iraq, subsequent commentary has suggested that Iraq may have come out ahead in the crisis. 'Saddam Hussein is back', ran the first sentence of a lengthy article on Iraq on the front page of yesterday's Washington Post. A Pentagon official was quoted as saying: 'The Defense Department is puzzled by the compromise because it appears to give Iraq the ability to decide the composition of the inspection team, which it clearly has no right to do.'

Rolf Ekeus, head of the UN Special Commission responsible for destroying Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, was reported not to have consulted the US on the final compromise with Iraq, under which US, British and French inspectors were excluded from the team allowed into the ministry building.

The crisis may have blown up too quickly to have enhanced significantly Mr Bush's electoral prospects but a deepening of the cold war with Iraq over the next three months - and the prospects of it becoming a hot war - means a shift in the political agenda away from domestic affairs, which have hitherto dominated the election.

Mr Clinton and Al Gore, the Democratic candidates, have been quick to counter Republican efforts to capitalise on the latest episode in the conflict between Baghdad and Washington.

Mr Gore asked tartly: 'If President Bush and Vice-President Quayle are such whizzes at foreign policy, why is it that Saddam Hussein is thumbing his nose at the entire world this morning, proclaiming victory and still in power?'

(Photograph omitted)