Blair wants new UN vote

US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair met yesterday to discuss whether a war to disarm Iraq should have UN authorisation as Baghdad looked to UN arms inspectors to avert an invasion.

Bush and Blair say President Saddam Hussein has just weeks to comply with UN demands or face their nations' military might, and the US leader was expected to seek the prime minister's view on giving Iraq an ultimatum, US officials said.

Such a deadline could effectively fix a date for a war because Saddam insists he has no banned weapons to declare as required by UN resolutions stemming from the 1991 Gulf War.

Blair, positioning himself as a linkman between the sole superpower and reluctant major powers such as France, Russia and Germany, made clear he wanted to get more allies on board through the United Nations.

Bush believes a UN Security Council resolution unanimously approved in November provides authority for military force. But Blair, Bush's staunchest ally on Iraq, implied he would press Bush to wait for a second resolution that could win support for war around the world.

"It is right that we go for a second resolution because that is a way of saying this is an issue that the international community is not going to duck," Blair told CNN before an afternoon talking tactics at the White House.

"The way of keeping everyone together is to adhere to the discipline and integrity of that UN process," he said.

Nearly every respondent in a Reuters poll of defence experts forecast a US-led invasion before March ends. Military morale, domestic politics and looming summer heat all argue for the mainly US and British troops being deployed in the Gulf to be sent into action sooner rather than later.

"The horse is already out of the barn," said Sarah Emerson at Boston-based Energy Security Analysis. Of 20 analysts, most said it would all be over before July.

For all its defiant talk, the Iraqi administration conceded Bush - the "super-idiot" in the words of Saddam's Baath party newspaper yesterday - is not bluffing by massing its warships, bombers, tanks and troops in the area. And Baghdad can have few illusions about its ability to resist America's military.

Against that backdrop, Iraq revived its main defensive response by inviting UN inspection chiefs to discuss more cooperation before their next major report on February 14 to the Security Council. Iraqi officials later sounded in no mood for concessions.

Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix said he would meet Saddam if he were invited to do so, and would tell the Iraqi leader to cooperate more actively with inspections.

But Blix would not reveal whether he and his colleague, International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei, would travel to Baghdad in early February in response to the invitation from an adviser to Saddam in charge of the UN inspection process.

As long as UN inspectors are still present - and key members of the Security Council like France and Russia want them there - Iraq knows it is safe from US bombs. The inspectors themselves are ready to continue for months.

ElBaradei said he and Blix would not consider the invitation unless Iraq drops objections to U2 spy plane flights and did more to ensure inspectors could interview Iraqi scientists in private.

Yet the head of the Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate later repeated previous reservations about interviews and U2s.

Even if the inspectors hold to their view in two weeks that there are no gross violations of UN resolutions, Bush has made clear he is ready for war without further UN approval.

The Bush administration has generally been unsuccessful convincing reluctant allies and much of the American public that Saddam's alleged nuclear, biological or chemical programs are an imminent threat.

Polls show there would be widespread American support for a US-led war that has UN authority and many US allies say they would back force with such Security Council approval.

Many UN diplomats also believe the Bush Administration in the next few weeks will agree to a Security Council resolution authorizing force and setting a deadline.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer did not rule out a second resolution, saying one would be desirable but is not mandatory. "We're consulting about it," he said.

"The president does believe that the stronger the unity of the world, the more the pressure will be on Saddam Hussein to disarm. But in the event the world is not unified, the president will not hesitate to take the actions that he deems necessary, along with a rather broad and growing coalition, to disarm Saddam Hussein," he said.