UK planning to call up reservists
Tue, January 07, 2003
Source: Ananova
Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon is expected to announce the mobilisation of 7,000 reservists and the deployment of helicopter assault ship HMS Ocean to depart in the middle of January.
UK planning to call up reservists
The UK is planning to call up thousands of army reservists as the military build-up in the Gulf continues.
Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon is expected to announce the mobilisation of 7,000 reservists and the deployment of helicopter assault ship HMS Ocean to depart in the middle of January. He could make a Commons statement as early as today.
Tony Blair is also planning to issue a bleak warning of the dangers of failing to tackle Iraq's arsenal of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. In a speech to British ambassadors gathered in London, the Prime Minister will say the world will "rue the consequences of our weakness" unless Saddam Hussein is disarmed. And he will underline his determination to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with George W Bush as America's closest ally in the current stand-off with Baghdad. His comments follow the disclosure yesterday that a Royal Navy task force, headed by the carrier HMS Ark Royal, will set sail on Saturday on a deployment which will take it into the Gulf, further ratcheting up the pressure on Saddam.
In his closing address to the two-day ambassadors' conference, Mr Blair will warn that the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) pose a direct threat to British security. It was "only a matter of time" before terrorists were able to get their hands on WMD, he will say, so that when a regime such as Iraq refused international demands to disarm that regime was threatening the UK. "Unless the world takes a stand on this issue of WMD, we will rue the consequences of our weakness," he is expected to say.
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