Inspectors begin second day of talks in Baghdad

As the UN’s chief weapons inspectors today began their second day of talks in Baghdad before their crucial report to the Security Council next Friday, Secretary General Kofi Annan warned that the US must not go to war with Iraq alone without the backing of the international community.

Mr Annan said the Security Council must “face up to its responsibilities” if the report by Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei revealed Baghdad was not co-operating with the UN.

Mr Annan said in an address in the US: “When there is strong UN leadership, exercised through patient diplomatic persuasion and coalition-building, the United Nations is successful.

“The United Nations is most successful to all its members, including the United States, when it is united and works as a source of collective action rather than discord.

“The broader our consensus on Iraq, the better the chance that we can come together and deal effectively with other burning conflicts in the world, which cause untold suffering and which urgently need our attention: From Israel and Palestine to Congo and Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), not to mention our efforts to stabilise Afghanistan.”

Mr Annan added: “As the United Nations, we have the duty to exhaust all possibilities of peaceful settlement, before resorting to the use of force.

“This is an issue not for any one state, but for the international community as a whole.

“When states decide to use force, not in self-defence but to deal with broader threats to international peace and security, there is no substitute for the unique legitimacy provided by the United Nations Security Council.”

The Foreign Office insisted Mr Annan’s comments reflected those of the Prime Minister, who said last week that “we continue to believe that the UN is the right way to proceed”.

Dr Blix, head of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, and Dr ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, arrived in the Iraqi capital yesterday with a warning to Saddam Hussein’s regime that it must “drastically” change if it is to avoid a war.

The inspectors’ discussions with Iraqi officials will help form their report to the UN on February 14, which many predict could provide a trigger for war.

Before leaving Cyprus en route to Baghdad, Dr Blix yesterday told reporters that he was “making no predictions at all” about the talks.

The February 14 report could pave the way for a second resolution by the UN Security Council, sanctioning military action against Baghdad.

Meanwhile, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld yesterday told an annual security conference in Munich that momentum was building and it would become clear in “days or weeks” whether Saddam was prepared to co-operate.

“No one wants war. War is never a first or an easy choice. But the risks of war need to be balanced against the risks of doing nothing while Iraq pursues weapons of mass destruction,” he said.

“Clearly, momentum is building, momentum that sends a critically important message to the Iraqi regime – about our seriousness of purpose and the world’s determination that Iraq disarm.”

But the UN Secretary General urged the international community to continue to play a long game in disarming Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction.

Colonel Terence Taylor, a senior UN weapons inspector in the 1990s who now runs the Institute for Strategic Studies in the US, said there was still a chance for Iraq to comply with UN resolution 1441 and disarm.

But he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “The danger is that the regime still clings to straws. They hear voices in the Security Council asking for more time for the inspectors, and they might make the mistake that they can hold out.

“That is unfortunate, because it will obviously lead to the use of armed force.

“Politically, one hears talk of windows closing, I think it’s only just marginally ajar at the moment.”

A report in The Sunday Telegraph said Britain and America were drawing up plans to give Saddam 48 hours to flee Baghdad or face war as part of a second UN resolution.

Buy a Downing Street spokeswoman said: “It is far too early to be talking about that sort of thing. We are where we are and we need to let the inspectors get on with what they are doing before we start going down the road of what a resolution would look like.”

Meanwhile, a poll published today showed that the Prime Minister’s approval rating has fallen to its lowest level since the last General Election, an indication of public unease about war in Iraq.

The YouGov poll for The Mail on Sunday found that 44% of people believed Mr Blair was performing well, compared with 48% on January 3-4 and 62% in January 2002.

Nearly two-thirds – 63% – agreed with Nelson Mandela that Mr Blair was more like the foreign minister of the US than the British Prime Minister; 32% disagreed while 5% did not know.

:: YouGov polled 1,903 people online on February 7 and 8.