US, Britain, Spain to hold Iraq crisis summit

Leaders of the United States, Britain and Spain will hold an emergency summit tomorrow in a last-gasp diplomatic effort to overcome opposition in the UN Security Council to a resolution paving the way for war on Iraq.

President George W. Bush will travel to Portugal's Azores islands, 1,450 kilometres west of the European mainland, to meet British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar in a "final pursuit" of a UN resolution on disarming Iraq, the White House said yesterday.

"In an effort to pursue every last bit of diplomacy the president will depart Sunday morning for the Azores ... to discuss prospects for resolving the situation peacefully with diplomacy in final pursuit of a United Nations resolution," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.

US officials said the summit, to be held at a US air base at Lajes on the island of Terceira, should not be considered a war council but rather an effort to find unity on the Security Council in hopes of forcing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to give up power without war.

"If the Security Council is able to pass a resolution, much like what has already been discussed by the United States, the British and the Spanish, it is still possible for Saddam Hussein to see the writing on the wall and to get out of Iraq and therefore preserve peace," Fleischer said.

Washington says that it can attack Iraq without clear UN backing but Russia, Germany and France all refused to drop opposition to any rapid military action by 250,000 US and British troops massed in the Gulf region.

The United States, Britain and Spain have drawn up a resolution that sets Iraq a tough ultimatum to disarm or face invasion. So far only one other of the 15-nation Security Council - Bulgaria - has publicly backed the proposal.

Washington accuses Baghdad of hiding weapons of mass destruction and diplomats say Bush might order a strike on Iraq in the coming days, impatient with the stiff opposition at the United Nations. Iraq says it has no such weapons.

French President Jacques Chirac, who has threatened to veto any UN resolution sanctioning war, told Blair that Paris was ready to seek a compromise about disarming Iraq but rejected any ultimatum leading to war.

A spokeswoman for Chirac said France was ready to discuss halting UN arms inspections before the end of a 120-day period which Paris has favored until now. Her account of a telephone call to Blair suggested little else new in Chirac's position.

In a bruising dispute between allies, the United States, Britain and Spain failed on Thursday to persuade the Security Council to agree to their resolution.

Faced with such resistance, the United States said it might abandon efforts to get a UN vote altogether. It says last November's resolution 1441 is mandate enough.

But Blair, facing his worst political crisis over Iraq, is anxious for UN cover to assuage British public opinion, which is opposed to any military action without UN approval.

Washington and London agreed to extend diplomacy over the weekend by dropping a demand for a Council vote yesterday.

"All the options that you can imagine are before us and (we will) be examining them today, tomorrow and into the weekend," Powell said on Thursday.

Moscow, Berlin and Paris maintained their faith in the work of UN weapons inspections in Iraq. "It is still possible to solve this conflict peacefully," Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder told the German parliament.

The US navy said it was moving a dozen more missile-firing warships from the eastern Mediterranean to the Gulf region, joining more than 60 other US ships arrayed against Iraq. Such a move could bring more cruise missiles to bear on Iraq.

If there were no vote on a new resolution, the legal situation might be governed by Resolution 1441, which threatened "serious consequences" if Iraq did not disarm.

But if a new resolution were voted down, an attack against Iraq could be seen as a violation of international law.

A UN resolution needs nine of 15 votes to pass, with no vetoes. Six nations - Angola, Chile, Cameroon, Guinea, Mexico and Pakistan - are undecided about the resolution. It is backed by Britain, the United States, Spain and Bulgaria. France, Russia, China, Germany and Syria oppose it.

World oil prices slumped as market dealers anticipated that a US war against Iraq could start soon and finish quickly. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones index jumped by 1 per cent.