Reportaje de THOM SHANKER en "The New York Times" del 21-1-03

As American combat forces continued to flow into the Persian Gulf region and the United Nations debated Iraq, Mr. Rumsfeld said "it will not take months" to decide whether President Saddam Hussein is cooperating with weapons inspectors.

In making his case that the United States and "a coalition of the willing" must prepare for military action to disarm Iraq, should President Bush order the nation to war, he said the Hussein government had been stonewalling weapons inspectors.

"His regime has large, unaccounted-for stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons including VX, Sarin, mustard gas, anthrax, botulism and possibly smallpox," Mr. Rumsfeld said in an address to the Reserve Officers Association here. "And he has an active program to acquire and develop nuclear weapons."

He dismissed those who were demanding incontrovertible proof of Iraq's arsenal of terror weapons.

"The United Nations resolution did not put the burden of proof on the United States or the United Nations to prove that Iraq has these weapons," he said. "The U.N. resolution put the burden directly on Iraq to prove that it is disarming and that it does not have these weapons or if it does, it is willing to give them up."

Thus far, Mr. Rumsfeld said, "Iraq has been unwilling to do so — its declaration was false." The level of cooperation with inspectors has fallen short of the official agreement for access "any time, any place."

While Iraq and North Korea "are both repressive dictatorships," Iraq "is unique," he said.

"No other living dictator has shown the same deadly combination of capability and intent, of aggression against its neighbors, pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, the use of chemical weapons against his own people as well as against his neighbors, oppression of his own people, support of terrorism, and the most threatening hostility to its neighbors, and to the United States, as has Iraq," he said.

Although diplomatic options to disarm Iraq were quickly reaching an end, Mr. Rumsfeld said, that is not the case with North Korea.

"North Korea is a threat to be sure, but it's a different kind of threat, one that, for now at least, can be handled through diplomacy and differently," he said.

He put North Korea on notice that "we have robust capabilities in northeast Asia" to deter attack, but he also emphasized that "we're pursuing the diplomatic route with North Korea."

Ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction would serve as a powerful deterrent to nations that otherwise might threaten the United States, he said.

"The disarmament of Iraq, whether it be by diplomatic pressure, which is our hope, or if necessary as a last choice, by the use of force, will make clear to other terrorist regimes that pursuing weapons of mass destruction will make them less secure, not more secure," he said.

In a question-and-answer period after his address, Mr. Rumsfeld said the Bush administration had already spent much time in planning how to help build a democratic form of government in a post-Hussein Iraq.

But he said any future system of government would be "uniquely Iraqi," not imposed on any template by the United States or its allies.

Also today, American military officials identified a major component of the Army force to be assembled in the Persian Gulf region ahead of a possible attack on Iraq.

About 12,500 troops from the Fourth Infantry Division, based at Fort Hood, Tex., and about 4,000 more from that division's Third Brigade, based at Fort Carson, Colo., have received orders to relocate to the Middle East, Army officials said.

Their mission was among the deployment orders previously signed by Mr. Rumsfeld, officials said, although those specific units had not been identified.

The Fourth Infantry Division includes Abrams tanks with the Army's most sophisticated digital communications and target-identification systems, as well as Bradley fighting vehicles and Apache helicopters.