Bush administration seeks military go ahead at home

“It serves no US or UN purpose to give Saddam Hussein excuses for further delay,” US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Congress yesterday.

“Only certainty of US and UN purposefulness can have even the prospect of affecting the Iraqi regime. It is important that Congress send that message as soon as possible – before the UN Security Council votes.”

Yesterday, Tony Blair also urged the international community to “keep up the pressure” on Saddam, in the wake of the Iraqi dictator’s offer of an unconditional return of weapons inspectors.

And US President George W Bush insisted that the Iraqi offer – made in a letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan late on Monday “wouldn’t fool anybody”.

But Whitehall sources acknowledged that the US and Britain faced an uphill struggle to win the support of permanent UN Security Council members Russia, China and France for a new resolution.

“There is a lot of hard diplomacy to do over the next few days,” said one source.

Both France and Russia have suggested that Saddam’s offer may remove the need for a new resolution on Iraq’s chemical, biological and nuclear weapons capacity.

In a statement last night, Mr Annan said that the Iraqi foreign minister Naji Sabri had pledged his government’s full cooperation on finalising arrangements for the swift return of inspectors.

After meeting Mr Annan, Mr Sabri said: “We hope that this step ... will be the first step toward a comprehensive solution to the crisis in the relations between the United Nations and Iraq and the lifting of the brutal regime of sanctions which has been killing our people for 12 years.”

Speaking before Mr Sabri’s statement, Mr Blair insisted: “We have got to keep up the pressure.

“It’s the pressure that has brought him to this position. We have got to keep up the pressure to make sure the weapons inspectors actually go in – not just that he says they can go in, but they actually go in and that they can do their job.

“Those are still the obligations that Iraq has got to fulfill, and we have got to keep up the pressure and make sure they do it.”

The British Prime Minister said that it was only tough action from Mr Bush - backed by Britain - that had forced Saddam to concede the return of inspectors after four years.

“Nobody should be in any doubt,” he said. “This is not because Saddam wants to let the inspectors back in.

“He has played around for years. The UN had to break off negotiations in July because he wasn’t co-operating.”

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and his senior officials are understood to be in close telephone contact with other Security Council permanent members in a bid to ensure that none of them vetoes a new resolution.

Meanwhile, negotiations continued in New York in the hope of reaching an acceptable form of words to be delivered to the UN some time next week.

Britain wants the new resolution to spell out the extent of Iraq’s breaches of earlier UN demands and to include some sense of the timescale within which Saddam will be expected to comply if he is to avoid punitive action.

Chief weapons inspector Hans Blix met Iraqi officials for the first time on Tuesday night to discuss the readmission of his Unmovic team and experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency.

But the talks had to be adjourned until September 30 after the Iraqi team were unable to answer any of his questions about the practical arrangements for the inspectors’ return and said they needed to consult with Baghdad.

Whitehall sources said that the Iraqis’ failure to provide answers at the meeting “doesn’t inspire confidence”.

The Security Council is to meet today to review progress in Mr Blix’s talks.

And concerns were also being raised over phrases in the Iraqi letter, which speaks of inspectors being allowed back into the country without conditions, rather than granted unrestricted access to suspect sites inside the country.

In an Oval Office meeting with leading Republicans and Democrats yesterday, Mr Bush predicted that the UN would rally behind his approach.

Asked about reservations expressed by Russia and France, he said: “All they’ve got to do is look at his record.

“(Saddam’s) latest ploy, his latest attempt not to be held accountable for defying the United Nations - he is not going to fool anybody.

“I am convinced that when we continue to make the case about his defiance, his deception, the fact that time and time again - dozens of times - he has told the world, ‘Oh, I will comply’, and he never does, that nations who care about peace and care about the validity of the United Nations will join us.”

A Bush administration official said that the White House was drafting a congressional resolution authorising the president to use “all appropriate means” to deal with Iraq.

The legislation is expected to win overwhelming bipartisan approval in the House and Senate, possibly within two weeks.

The Pentagon has said it was seeking to move some B-2 bombers closer to Baghdad.

Reports suggested the administration was seeking permission from Britain to base a small number of B-2 stealth bombers on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, cutting by half the distance they would fly to reach Iraq.

Because of the special maintenance required to preserve the B-2’s radar-evading stealth qualities, climate-controlled shelters would have to be erected on Diego Garcia before the planes arrived.

A spokesman for the Foreign Office said he could not confirm whether Britain had given the US permission to base the B-2s on the island.