Troops wait as deadline draws near

:: RAF and Army servicemen and women posted their final letters and made last calls home before communication lines were shut down.

:: At secret briefings generals and intelligence experts studied 11th-hour reports of Iraqi troop movements.

:: Latest intelligence reports indicate troops on the ground could face a last-ditch chemical weapons assault from Saddam Hussein’s desperate regime.

:: British service personnel have now been ordered to carry protective anti-chemical warfare suits, as well as respirators, with them at all times.

:: British Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke to US President George W Bush for 20 minutes today. Downing Street did not release any further details about the call.

:: Earlier, at Prime Minister’s Question Time in the Commons, Mr Blair led MPs in wishing troops well in the coming conflict and sought to switch attention to post-Saddam Iraq.

He said: “Our quarrel is not with the Iraqi people. The Iraqi people are the principal victims of Saddam Hussein.”

:: Mr Blair also met key ministers and officials, expected to form a War Cabinet once hostilities begin, at Downing Street. They included the Chief of Defence Staff Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon, Home Secretary David Blunkett, International Development Secretary Clare Short, Chancellor Gordon Brown and Labour Party chairman John Reid.

The heads of the intelligence agencies – MI5, MI6 and GCHQ – would almost certainly also have been there too.

:: Tomorrow Mr Blair was set to confront French President Jacques Chirac over his threat to wield a United Nations veto, which scuppered diplomatic efforts to force Saddam Hussein to disarm himself of weapons of mass destruction.

They are set to clash head-on at a dinner before a long-scheduled EU summit in Brussels.

:: Iraqi MPs today vowed to sacrifice their lives for Saddam Hussein in an extraordinary session of parliament where they flatly rejected the US ultimatum for their president and his sons to go into exile or face war.

:: The Turkish Government was asking parliament to allow US planes to use its air space, with a vote expected on Thursday.

:: The US military said its aircraft have dropped nearly two million leaflets on Iraq – their biggest drop to date

:: David Kidney, a PPS at the Department of the Environment Food and Rural Affairs, confirmed he had become the sixth ministerial aide to quit the Government over the Iraq crisis.

The MP for Stafford, who resigned after voting for the rebel amendment in the Commons, said he did not think there was sufficient international backing for a war.

:: The Home Office advised the public to keep tinned food, bottled water and a battery-powered torch at home in new guidance on how they could protect themselves in the event of a major terrorist attack in Britain. It stressed there was no specific information that terrorists were planning a large-scale incident, such as a nuclear, chemical or biological attack.

:: The Russian, French and German Foreign Ministers spoke out in a symbolic protest at the United Nations that is unlikely to affect Washington’s resolve to topple Saddam Hussein.

They said that “indisputable facts” had not been produced to show that Iraq was a threat to the US and the Security Council had been brushed aside. Humanitarian aid must now be the council’s focus.