US Vice President Dick Cheney was to spearhead talks with Iraqi opposition figures yesterday, reinforcing Washington's message to President Saddam Hussein that his days in office are numbered.
Meanwhile, President George W. Bush yesterday described Iraq as an "enemy until proven otherwise" but that he has no timetable for making a decision on using military force to topple Saddam.
Cheney was to speak via video link from his vacation in Wyoming a day after the six groups based in London and Tehran won encouragement from Secretary of State Colin Powell in their pledge to work together to overthrow Saddam.
"The videoconference is part of our effort to strengthen the Iraqi opposition to the regime in Baghdad," said Sean McCormack, spokesman for the White House National Security Council.
McCormack said other senior officials from the NSC, the Department of Defense and the State Department would also participate in the conversation.
The opposition, once belittled by a US general as "silk-suited, Rolex-wearing guys in London," announced after talks at the State Department that they would hold a conference in Europe to consolidate unity among themselves.
"Our shared goal is that the Iraqi people should be free," a senior US official quoted Powell as telling the Iraqis as he dropped in on their talks with senior US officials.
"He [Powell] wished us well and encouraged us," commented Ahmed Chalabi, visiting head of the US-backed Iraqi National Congress umbrella group, which has had troubled ties with Washington due to alleged mismanagement of its funds.
The session with Cheney is a measure of the importance Washington now attaches to the opposition after years of dismissing it as divided and ineffective.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he would also like to meet the visitors, if he could find time.
Bush was asked if Americans were prepared for casualties in a war with Iraq. "That presumes there is some kind of imminent war plan. As I said, I have no timetable," he replied.
Bush said Iraq's pursuit of weapons of mass destruction made it an "enemy until proven otherwise." Against a backdrop of Baghdad's consistent refusal to readmit international weapons inspectors, he added, "They obviously desire weapons of mass destruction. I presume that he still views us as an enemy."
The visiting opposition includes two rival Kurdish groups who have run northern Iraq since they took control of the Kurdish enclave after the 1991 Gulf War. They command most of an estimated 40,000-member anti-Saddam force between them.
Apart from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdish Democratic Party, the other invitees were the Iraqi National Accord and the Iranian-based Shiite Muslim opposition group called the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which has 3,000 fighters near Iraq's border with Iran.
Analysts say it could take up to a quarter of a million American troops to overthrow the Iraqi leader.
Retired General Anthony Zinni, the outspoken special envoy to the Middle East, was quoted before he left the military as describing the INC as "silk-suited, Rolex-wearing guys in London." He said helping them to "gin up an expedition" against Saddam would be a disaster.
Comparing it to the CIA-backed Cuban-exile invasion that Fidel Castro crushed at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, he said such an attempt in Iraq would cause "a Bay of Goats, most likely."
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