Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf

In February 1998, the Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf (CPSG) called upon President William Jefferson Clinton to endorse a scenario which, more than five years later (August 2003), has become a familiar one to the world.http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9802/20/iraq.war.presser/

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The CPSG asked Clinton "to go beyond a military strike on Iraq and to help overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and replace his regime with a provisional government." According to the news report, however, "U.S. law and international opposition to such a plan would make it unlikely."http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9802/20/iraq.war.presser/

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The February 20, 1998 news announcement by CNN, said that the Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf was a "bipartisan group whose members are prominent in U.S. international policy circles.... The 39-member group, organized as the Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf, include former U.S. Rep. Stephen Solarz of New York, who was a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Richard Perle, a former assistant defense secretary for international security policy."

Related Topics:
Stephen Solarz - Richard Perle

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The group based its request for a strike against Iraq on Saddam Hussein's refusal "to grant U.N. inspectors the right to conduct unfettered inspections of those sites where he is suspected of storing his still significant arsenal of chemical and biological munitions and his apparent determination never to relinquish his weapons of mass destruction." In a letter read at a Washington news conference, Solarz called upon Clinton "to adopt and implement a plan of action designed to finally and fully resolve this utterly unacceptable threat to our most vital national interests."

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Additionally, Solarz stated that "if the force used against Iraq during the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the punishing U.N. economic sanctions that have been in place for seven years haven't persuaded Hussein to cooperate with U.N. inspectors, it's unlikely that a new and 'much more limited' military strike will change the Iraqi leader's mind."

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