Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, citing what they believed to be increased Iraqi cooperation, sought to extend inspections and give Iraq more time to comply with them. Other world leaders, such as French Pres. Iraq appeared to comply with the resolution, but in early 2003 President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair declared that Iraq was actually continuing to hinder UN inspections and that it still retained proscribed weapons. UN Security Council Resolution 1441, passed on November 8, 2002, demanded that Iraq readmit inspectors and that it comply with all previous resolutions. Bush, argued that the vulnerability of the United States following the September 11 attacks of 2001, combined with Iraq’s alleged continued possession and manufacture of weapons of mass destruction (an accusation that was later proved erroneous) and its support for terrorist groups-which, according to the Bush administration, included al-Qaeda, the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks-made disarming Iraq a renewed priority. After the bombing, however, Iraq refused to allow inspectors to reenter the country, and during the next several years the economic sanctions slowly began to erode as neighbouring countries sought to reopen trade with Iraq. Bill Clinton in 1998 to order the bombing of several Iraqi military installations (code-named Operation Desert Fox). That country’s continued flouting of the UN weapons ban and its repeated interference with the inspections frustrated the international community and led U.S. ( See weapon of mass destruction.) UN inspections during the mid-1990s uncovered a variety of proscribed weapons and prohibited technology throughout Iraq. Moreover, to restrain future Iraqi aggression, the United Nations ( UN) implemented economic sanctions against Iraq in order to, among other things, hinder the progress of its most lethal arms programs, including those for the development of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. To stem the exodus of Kurds from Iraq, the allies established a “safe haven” in northern Iraq’s predominantly Kurdish regions, and allied warplanes patrolled “no-fly” zones in northern and southern Iraq that were off-limits to Iraqi aircraft. However, the Iraqi branch of the Baʿath Party, headed by Saddam Hussein, managed to retain power by harshly suppressing uprisings of the country’s minority Kurds and its majority Shiʿi Arabs. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 ended in Iraq’s defeat by a U.S.-led coalition in the Persian Gulf War (1990–91). (Read Britannica’s interview with Jimmy Carter on the Iraq War and world affairs.) Prelude to war After violence began to decline in 2007, the United States gradually reduced its military presence in Iraq, formally completing its withdrawal in December 2011. It was followed by a longer second phase in which a U.S.-led occupation of Iraq was opposed by an insurgency. The first of these was a brief, conventionally fought war in March–April 2003, in which a combined force of troops from the United States and Great Britain (with smaller contingents from several other countries) invaded Iraq and rapidly defeated Iraqi military and paramilitary forces. Iraq War, also called Second Persian Gulf War, (2003–11), conflict in Iraq that consisted of two phases. troops prepared to withdraw from the country. military formally declared the end of the Iraq War in a ceremony in Baghdad on December 15, 2011, as U.S.
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