US President George W. Bush and visiting British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Thursday in Washington that the coalition forces will fight in Iraq until victory "however long it takes."
"However long it takes to win. However long it takes to achieve our objective. However long it takes," Bush told a joint press conference with Blair after their first meeting at the presidential retreat Camp David since the war started last week.
"It's not a matter of timetable, it's a matter of victory," Bush said.
The British prime minister made similar remarks when asked how long the campaign will last. "It's not set by time, it's set by the nature of the job," Blair said.
Blair said US-led military operations have achieved "a massive amount" in the week since they started.
Both the leaders also urged the United Nations to restart the oil-for-food program in Iraq immediately.
"This urgent humanitarian issue must not be politicized. The Security Council should give Secretary-General Kofi Annan the authority to start getting food supplies to those most in need of assistance," Bush said.
The oil-for-food program, which started in 1996, was suspended last Thursday after the war broke out. The program uses Iraqi oil revenues to pay for food, medicine and other civilian goods to ease the impact of sanctions imposed in August 1990 after Iraq invaded Kuwait.
On Wednesday, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said that he is confident that the UN Security Council will reach an agreement on adjusting the humanitarian oil-for-food program.
"On the oil-for-food program, I'm confident that the (council) members will find a solution," he told reporters upon his arrival at the UN headquarters in New York.
On Tuesday, following his meeting with US President George W. Bush's security advisor Condoleezza Rice, Annan stressed Tuesday that any UN role in post-war Iraq beyond the provision of humanitarian assistance would have to be decided by the Security Council through a resolution.
Annan's spokesman Fred Eckhard said in a statement that Annan said that the United Nations would have "limited capacity to do so until security conditions allowed for the safe return of staff to affected areas."
"Until then, humanitarian assistance would have to be provided by the United States and its coalition partners in those areas under their control, consistent with their overall responsibility under international law," Annan was quoted as telling Rice.
Russia has also urged the US-led coalition countries to take measures to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe in Iraq.
Early this week, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Yuri Fedotov said that the countries that have launched the campaign on Iraq should tackle the humanitarian aftereffects, said the Russian official.
"Russia proceeds from the fact that the countries that have used force in evasion of the UN Security Council and in violation of international legal norms must liquidate the inevitable, acute humanitarian consequences of their actions," he said.
(Xinhua News Agency March 28, 2003)
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