Monitor Breakfast

"I certainly believe it would be a mistake for us to do this alone. We need to have allies particularly in the region from the Arab world and beyond the region, including from Europe. But we can put together such a coalition without a Security Council resolution if that is impossible to obtain.

"We would be better off if we had some allies with us. It is as simple as that...It is clear already that if the president decides we should act soon that we will not act alone. The question is how many allies will be with us. There is a sense of confidence, certainly within the administration that ...some of our allies in the region and some of our allies in Europe will be with us."

"With all respect, the Bush administration has not handled this well. They rattled sabers without explaining why and they raised the public statements of intention against Iraq before they built the support for carrying out those intentions either among members of Congress, the American people, or of course our allies. [The] way in which they raised anxieties, alarmed those who oppose a move against Iraq, and allowed debate to get away from them ...is unfortunate."

"The fact is that the president's effort ... to get our allies around the world to join us in this quest to protect the world from Saddam Hussein has been made much more difficult by other elements of the Bush administration's foreign policy which are seen by people around the world – including our closest allies in Europe and Asia – as much too one-sided [and] unilateral.

"Basically you can't break away from a series of international agreements and treaties that enjoy broad support throughout the world and then turn around and say to the world 'Let's go to war in Iraq' and expect everyone to fall in line. There has to be more mutuality."

"There were none that I know of – I know there were none with me and there were none that I know of with anyone else. Looking back, it is pretty clear – and I hope the people in the administration agree with this – that right from the outset, it would have been important to bring in people from Congress to begin this discussion, and of course to reach out to our allies. We now have a situation where a number of our allies have made quite strong statements of opposition or of doubt about our intentions in Iraq. And it makes it harder to change their minds.

"I think that was a consequential failure of diplomacy."

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