By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 8, 2002; Page A01

President Bush said yesterday the world has all the evidence it needs that Iraq is continuing to develop weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, as he was host to British Prime Minister Tony Blair for a three-hour strategy session on building international support for aggressive action against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Speaking to reporters before they began closed-door consultations at Camp David, Bush and Blair agreed the Iraqi threat must be addressed quickly. "We owe it to future generations to deal with this problem," Bush said.

"The policy of inaction, doing nothing, is not something we can responsibly adhere to," Blair said.

Bush is scheduled to address the United Nations about Iraq on Thursday. His advisers say the speech will lay out the case for urgent action, and warn the international community that time is running out for stopping Hussein's pursuit of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

With the exception of Blair, U.S. allies have been reluctant to subscribe to the administration's policy of "regime change," and have said they would not participate in a U.S. military invasion to oust the Iraqi leader. Warning that such action would violate international law and destabilize much of the world, they have insisted the United Nations is the proper venue for dealing with Iraq's reneging on promises to destroy its weapons capability and submit to U.N. inspections.

Led by Vice President Cheney, several senior administration officials have said they see no purpose in another round of inspections, since Hussein repeatedly obstructed efforts that began after Iraq's defeat in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and has banned inspectors since 1998. Although officials said Bush shares that view, and believes a U.S. invasion of Iraq is inevitable, they said last week that he has agreed to issue one last challenge to the international community to make good on its resolutions against Iraq.

Officials said the U.N. speech would amount to an ultimatum in which Bush will outline the threat in its starkest, most immediate terms and indicate that the United States will not wait much longer for international action. They said some details of the speech are still under discussion, including whether Bush would propose that the Security Council set a deadline for Iraqi compliance or issue a resolution authorizing an international military force to compel inspections.

The president said yesterday that "my administration still supports regime change," then added without elaboration, "There's all kinds of ways to change regimes." Asked whether anyone besides Blair supported his position that Iraq's threat will remain as long as Hussein is in power, Bush said "yes."

He said "a lot of people" agree that Hussein has weapons of mass destruction and has used chemical and biological weapons in the past -- in the late 1980s during attacks against Iraqi Kurds and in Iraq's war with Iran. "A lot of people understand he is unstable. So we've got a lot of support."

Blair, as he often does in appearances with Bush, gave a more specific response.

"There are people asking perfectly reasonable questions about this," Blair said. "But the one thing no one can deny is that Saddam Hussein is in breach of the United Nations resolutions on weapons of mass destruction . . . [and] that poses a threat."

Blair has tried to position himself between the president and increasingly outspoken European leaders who fear precipitative U.S. action against Baghdad. British officials said Blair has counseled Bush that he is much more likely to gain international support for an invasion if he allows the U.N. process to run its course.

Blair spent less than six hours on the ground. He arrived at Andrews Air Force Base at midafternoon and traveled by helicopter to the presidential retreat in Maryland for discussions and a quick dinner before returning to London last night.

After Blair's departure, National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack said that, in addition to Iraq, the prime minister and Bush had discussed the Middle East, and had "agreed on the importance of improving the security situation and intensifying the reconstruction effort" in Afghanistan. Last week, U.S. military bodyguards thwarted an attempt to assassinate Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and a bomb killed 26 people in Kabul. The administration has said it would support the expansion of an international security force, currently deployed only in Kabul, throughout the country but would not contribute troops to it.

As the two leaders, both dressed casually, responded to questions on the Camp David lawn before beginning their talks, it was Blair who repeatedly referred to international responsibility. Iraq, he said, "is an issue not just for America, not just for Britain, it's an issue for the whole of the international community."

As in the coalition against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, he said, "We want the broadest possible international support. But it's got to be on the basis of actually making sure that the threat that we've outlined" is adequately dealt with.

Blair said "the threat from Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction -- chemical, biological, potentially nuclear weapons capability -- that threat is real. We need only to look at the report from the International Atomic Energy Agency this morning, showing what has been going on at the former nuclear weapon sites to realize that."

The Vienna-based, U.N.-affiliated agency carried out inspections of Iraq's efforts to develop nuclear weapons before Hussein forced all inspectors from his country. IAEA reports chronicled numerous incidents of Iraqi deception and obstruction and the discovery of a sophisticated weapons program, but said that the program had been successfully dismantled by the end of 1998.

Bush, picking up Blair's theme, also referred to the "new [IAEA] report": "I would remind you that when the inspectors first went into Iraq and were denied -- finally denied access, a report came out of the . . . IAEA, that they [Iraqis] were six months away from developing a weapon. I don't know what more evidence we need."

While there is widespread international agreement that Iraq has continued to develop chemical and biological weapons, questions have been raised about whether it has restarted a nuclear arms program. Members of Congress have asked the administration to provide evidence for assertions by Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that Iraq is close to developing a nuclear weapon.

The joint mention of a "new" report apparently referred to articles in Friday's New York Times and yesterday's British press. They noted that satellite photos obtained by the IAEA indicated new construction at several sites identified as nuclear-related and dismantled during pre-1998 inspections.

But a spokeswoman at IAEA headquarters said yesterday that the agency has issued no new report. She said the newspaper accounts referred to commercially available images the agency made available in July in a presentation that elicited little media interest.

"We didn't want to make a big deal of it, because we have no idea whether it means anything," spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said of the photos. "Construction of a building is one thing. Restarting a nuclear program is another."

"We have a lot of commercial satellite imagery" indicating "that there has been construction at sites that were formerly nuclear," Fleming said. "But what that means, we don't know." She said the agency issued a news release late Friday to "make it clear there is nothing new."

A senior administration official last night confirmed a report in today's New York Times that says Iraq has sought over the past 14 months to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes, which U.S. intelligence officials believe were intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium. The story said that all of the attempts, the most recent occurring in the past several months, had been blocked. The official declined to say whether this information was among the "new" evidence of Iraq's nuclear intentions cited by the administration.

Before Blair's arrival yesterday, Bush discussed Iraq at Camp David with senior advisers including Cheney, Rumsfeld, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, CIA Director George J. Tenet, White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. and Rice deputy Stephen Hadley. Powell, Rumsfeld and Tenet left the compound as Blair was arriving.

Last week, Bush said for the first time that he would seek congressional authorization to take whatever action he deemed necessary against Iraq, and began consulting with international leaders. But telephone conversations Friday with the leaders of Russia, France and China yielded little support for his efforts.

Those three countries, along with Britain and the United States, are permanent members of the U.N. Security Council with veto power over any new resolution regarding inspections in Iraq. Such a resolution possibly could include an implicit or explicit promise that military invasion would follow noncompliance. U.S. officials believe France can probably be persuaded to sign on, but obtaining support from Russia and China -- both of which have economic and diplomatic interests in Iraq -- would be far more difficult.

A Kremlin statement after Bush's telephone call to Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed "serious doubts" about the validity of invading Iraq under international law. China is expected to follow Russia's lead in the Security Council. Although Beijing issued no comment about President Jiang Zemin's talk with Bush, a senior Chinese foreign policy official said Thursday that "we believe that this issue should be settled peacefully."

"We want the Iraq government to abide by the U.N. sanctions," the Chinese official said. "They have not done that. But we also feel that American use of force in the region would be a major destabilizing factor."

Staff writer John Pomfret in Beijing contributed to this report.