Impatient Bush presses UN on Iraq

US President George W. Bush ratcheted up pressure on the United Nations to disarm Iraq but France urged the United States to compromise to win the world body's support.

Increasingly impatient to win Security Council passage of a tough resolution designed to make Iraq give up what Washington says are its weapons of massive destruction programmes, the White House warned US allies to wake up or allow the United Nations to "slumber."

Ahead of a possible vote this week, Bush was making his case against Iraq on the campaign trail on Monday where he has drawn standing ovations for lambasting Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

But France continued to resist the pressure, saying Washington's latest proposed resolution needed changes to win wide international backing.

In weeks of debate, the United States has watered down an original version that explicitly threatened Iraq with war but Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said the US draft still fell short.

France and Russia, which along with the United States, Britain and China hold vetoes as permanent Security Council members, object to language they believe Washington could still use to justify an attack on Iraq.

"It is in the interests of all, including the United States, to reach a resolution which shows the support of the international community," Villepin said in an interview with Le Figaro newspaper. "All ambiguity must be dispelled."

With congressional and gubernatorial elections coming up next week, Bush's campaign drive has been complicated by the possibility his push for UN action on Iraq will fail.

As as he did on Sunday in Phoenix, Bush will devote some of his stump speech in New Mexico and Colorado to explaining why he believes the United Nations must move on Iraq.

"There's a true threat that we face in the form of Saddam Hussein," Bush said. "He said he doesn't have any weapons of mass destruction and he does."

"If the United Nations won't act, if Saddam Hussein will not act, if he continues to defy the world, the United States in the name of peace will lead a coalition to disarm Saddam Hussein." Bush said, bringing Republican faithful to their feet at a political rally in Phoenix's Dodge Theatre.

Shrugging off anti-war protests at home and abroad, US officials are struggling to get the nine votes needed to push through the resolution this week.

Bush went to the world body on September 12 to ask for a strong new resolution to force Iraq to disarm.

"It remains to be seen whether the members of the United Nations Security Council have heard that speech, and intend to change their ways, or whether the United Nations Security Council will once again fall into an acquiescent slumber," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.

Baghdad kept up its war of rhetoric with Washington, accusing it of trying to intimidate the UN Security Council into passing a resolution that could pave the way for war.

"The evil American administration is practicing clear terrorism inside and outside the Security Council in order to pass a new draft resolution," said al-Thawra newspaper, the mouthpiece of Saddam's ruling Baath Party.

Iraq agreed to give up chemical, biological and nuclear weapons after the 1991 Gulf War and says it has done so.

The New York Times reported on Monday the Pentagon has plans to call up roughly as many reservists as it did during the Gulf War, when about 265,000 members of the National Guard and Reserves were mobilised in the fight to drive invading Iraqi forces from Kuwait.

Despite estimates the United States would use fewer troops in a new war with Iraq, the large numbers of Guard and Reserve troops would be needed to help protect military bases overseas and at home, the newspaper said, citing administration officials and military experts.