By Wendy Ross
White House Correspondent

Washington -- President Bush said January 14 that he is "sick and tired of games and deception" being carried out by Iraq's Saddam Hussein and stressed once again that Saddam must disarm his nation of weapons of mass destruction as called for by the United Nations.

"Time is running out on" him. "He must disarm," Bush told reporters at the start of his meeting in the Oval Office with Poland's President Aleksander Kwasniewski. "So far, I haven't seen any evidence that he is disarming," said Bush.

"This is a question of not allowing Saddam Hussein to string the world along forever," White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters at his daily briefing January 14.

He said the fact that United Nations weapons inspectors say they need more time to do their work is not incompatible with the fact that time is running out for Saddam.

"I don't think the two are at all hard to understand or incompatible," Fleischer said.

He repeated that Bush "has not put a specific date" on this, and "will, of course, continue to consult and talk with our allies and friends about the situation in Iraq, as he regularly does. But it's fair to say that, just like I said, time is running out."

Asked how there cannot be a timetable if time is running out, Fleischer said, "that's something Saddam Hussein will have to figure out."

"I think it's perfectly consistent to say that while there's not a specific timetable, the president has made clear that time is running out. You're asking for a date, a month, a number of months, how much time, and that's an undefined matter. The president has simply said that time is running out," Fleischer said.

"The burden remains with Saddam Hussein. The issue is not how long the inspections will last; the issue is whether Saddam Hussein this time is finally willing to disarm," Fleischer said.

"He's been given a final chance to disarm. And, regrettably, we've seen no evidence that he has made the strategic choice to disarm and to come into compliance with the United Nations. We first saw this is in the Iraqi declaration, which the world agreed was inadequate, and Saddam has not complied and, therefore, time is running out," the Press Secretary repeated.

"The declaration that he made is proof positive that he has withheld information about his weapons of mass destruction program, programs that these previous inspectors said were there when they were forced out of the country in 1998. And now Saddam Hussein still has failed to account" for these weapons. And there are statements that come from United Nations weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Dr. ElBaradei about the gaps that are in the declaration, Fleischer said.

Asked if President Bush feels obliged to tell the American people how many casualties they should expect if he decides military action against Iraq is necessary, Fleischer said:

"I don't know that there's any possibility of predicting how many casualties may be expected in the event the president makes a decision to go to war. ... (I)t's a hypothetical about something that hasn't happened yet, and so I don't know how I can answer that other than to say that, as I said yesterday, in the event the president makes the determination that the best way to preserve the peace and to protect the American people is to move forward to disarm Saddam Hussein. He will, of course, and at some length, discuss this with the American people in great detail."

"(I)n the event that the president makes a determination that the best way to protect the peace is to disarm Saddam Hussein through a coalition of the willing, the president will, of course, make that case. But I don't want to get ahead of where the president is on this. But the president understands that that is a matter that the president of the United States has a singular responsibility to take on to communicate with the country and the world in the event he comes to that conclusion."

Asked to explain once more to the world why North Korea is less of a threat than Iraq is to the United States, Fleischer responded:

"Well, the president's judgment about why diplomacy can be successful in North Korea and why he is less optimistic that that is the case with Iraq is borne by the behavior of the leader of North Korea versus the leader of Iraq. Iraq has a recent history of acquiring weapons of mass destruction and then using them to kill its neighbors, to invade countries, to bring attacks to others -- Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Israel, Iran. There's virtually not a neighbor left for Iraq that they have not attacked in the past 10 to 15 years.

"That is not the case with North Korea. You have to go back to the Korean War to find examples where North Korea has physically, actually launched military assaults against its neighbors or the region. And so the president does view the two as different levels of threat or risk. And those are the judgments the president makes. And I think those judgments are borne out by the successful way he's working with the allies around the Korean Peninsula," Fleischer said.