UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said he believed it was "unfortunate" that Iraq's arms declaration dossier was only distributed among the five permanent members of the Security Council.
The Secretary-General was speaking after meeting the Security Council representatives yesterday.
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Mr Kofi Annan and Mr Hans Blix after a meeting with the members of the Security Council at UN headquarters in New York yesterday
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"In substance, I think the consensus of the group was that the decision was fine. But the approach, style and the form was wrong," he said.
"The Council had decided last Friday that nobody could get it and some would have preferred that the Council got into another meeting to discuss it before this decision was taken.
"But in substance, given the size of the declaration, there was a sense that since these five countries had experts in nuclear and other industries they could help the inspectors sift what needs to be taken out and give their judgments to the inspectors but the final decision would be up to the inspectors."
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"It was unfortunate and I hope it is not going to be repeated and I should also say that to those who maintain that the UN is being pushed around by the US," he added.
UN Weapons inspectors could complete a review of Iraq's arms declaration by the end of the week and present some of that material to Security Council members who have not received copies of the complete dossier, chief weapons inspector Mr Hans Blix said.
Meanwhile, the US, Russia, Britain, France and China - were each conducting their own analyses of the 12,000-page declaration yesterday.
Mr Blix said he hoped the five permanent council members, which got copies of the declaration on Monday, could also provide preliminary assessments by the end of the week.
"I told the council we hope that we have been through the main part of the document, about 3,000 pages, by Friday," Mr Blix told reporters after meeting with the council and Secretary-General Kofi Annan. "The bottleneck is translation."
Several council members, including Syria, Mexico and Norway are unhappy about a deal Washington cut late on Sunday to keep complete copies of the declaration out of the hands of the council's 10 non-permanent members.
Norwegian foreign minister Mr Jan Petersen said it was wrong to treat some members as "B-nations". Several ambassadors said they planned to raise the issue of access when the council discusses Iraq later this week.
In Baghdad, Iraqi officials called it "unprecedented extortion".
The US argues that the decision keeps sensitive material in the report about bomb-making out of the wrong hands. At CIA headquarters outside Washington, US specialists combed through the declaration yesterday. US officials also agreed with weapons experts that much of the material appeared to be recycled versions of earlier documents Iraq has already submitted.
Iraq maintains in the declaration that it no longer has weapons of mass destruction or the means to deliver them.
AP/PA