The US Defence Secretary, Mr William Cohen, said on Sunday that the targets of US air strikes against Iraq would include not only sites thought to contain President Saddam Hussein's suspected non-conventional weapons of mass destruction but also those housing conventional military forces that he could use to threaten his neighbours.
Continuing the drumbeat of Clinton administration warnings about the stalemate with Iraq, Mr Cohen and the National Security Adviser, Mr Sandy Berger, appeared on television to reiterate US willingness to mount a military assault soon unless Mr Saddam grants full access to suspected weapons production sites for UN inspection teams.
"Our national interest is in preventing him from threatening his neighbours once again, trying to take control and dominate that region," Mr Berger said on NBC. "And as long as he pops up and we stand firm, the international community has the will to knock him back. We will prevent him from being that kind of threat to his region."
In recent days, President Clinton and his senior foreign policy and military advisers have said the objectives of US military action against Iraq would be to significantly diminish and delay Mr Saddam's capacity to produce chemical and biological weapons, and his ability to threaten his neighbours. Appearing on ABC's This Week, Mr Cohen emphasised that the threat posed by the Iraqi leader to the Persian Gulf region extended beyond the issue of non-conventional weapons.
Asked if it would be "a major aim of an air attack on Iraq to degrade his conventional forces", Mr Cohen replied: "It is to degrade his ability to threaten his neighbours, either through weapons of mass destruction or through a conventional method."
He did not elaborate, but one likely conventional force target would be Iraq's Republican Guard, the most elite and loyal force in the Iraqi military. Such a course of action was urged by Republican Senator John McCain , as part of what he said should be a longer range plan to "destabilise and eventually overthrow" Mr Saddam.
Senator McCain and other senators said Congress would support military action against Iraq, although several urged Mr Clinton to delay ordering air strikes until after February 23rd when legislators return to Washington and can enact a formal resolution of support. Several politicians also said that the administration had not adequately prepared the public for the consequences of military action, including US casualties and civilian casualties on the ground in Iraq.
Mr Clinton is scheduled to deliver a televised address to the nation on the situation today. Tomorrow Mr Cohen, Mr Berger and the Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, will go to Columbus, Ohio, to explain US policy at Ohio State University.
As US warnings continued, the technical team dispatched to Baghdad by the UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, began to survey so-called "presidential sites" that Mr Saddam has put off limits to UN inspectors. Mr Richard Butler, the UN's chief weapons inspector, told CNN that the survey teams were sent to determine "whether there can be some few places in Iraq - namely about eight palaces - which will be inspected in a special way.
"That doesn't mean an ineffective inspection, but a special way that shows sensitivity to Iraq," Mr Butler said. "And if a solution on that basis is agreeable to the [Security] Council, maybe we've got a diplomatic solution."
But Mr Cohen dismissed the survey idea as "another indication of the dust that is raised by Saddam Hussein". He said he had seen "no proposal" for a diplomatic solution that would satisfy US demands for "full, unrestricted access" for the UN inspectors.