BRITAIN: The British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, was engaged in an intensive round of diplomacy last night as the British Foreign Secretary, Mr Jack Straw, declared "time is up" for President Saddam Hussein of Iraq.
Mr Blair discussed the gathering international crisis with the French President, Mr Jacques Chirac, by telephone, after earlier consultations with the prime ministers of Turkey, Greece and Australia. Mr Blair is expected to see the Italian Prime Minister, Mr Silvio Berlusconi, at Downing Street today, and will travel to Madrid for talks tomorrow with the Spanish Prime Minister, Mr José Maria Aznar, before flying to Washington for Friday's critical Camp David summit with President George Bush.
In each of these discussions, Mr Blair is pressing the Anglo-American view that Iraqi non-compliance with UN weapons inspectors is as serious as the discovery of the so-called smoking gun, and that although the inspectors should be allowed more time, this should be seen in terms of weeks and not months.
Downing Street and Mr Straw stopped short of declaring February 14th and the second inspectors' report as the effective "deadline" for a commitment to military action, signalling that a final decision could be delayed a little beyond that.
However, a bullish Mr Straw echoed Washington's insistence that "the time is up for Iraq to comply" with the UN's disarmament demands, and confirmed London's view that "as of today Iraq is in further material breach" of the UN resolutions.
Giving his considered response to Dr Hans Blix's report to the Security Council, Mr Straw side-stepped questions as to whether Britain considered that "further material breach" was sufficient to justify military action without a second UN resolution.
And although saying February 14th was not "an ultimatum" for Iraq, Mr Straw maintained "war is still not inevitable, it never has been." But Mr Straw also went on to tell the BBC that "the chances of this being resolved by peaceful means are now less than they were".
Speaking later at a Foreign Office press conference, Mr Straw declared: "What Iraq has to understand is that time is running out and if it does not comply with the requirements of the international community - which, by God, are now shown to be fully justified - then serious consequences will follow."
He continued: "The world would be a much, much more dangerous place if, at this stage, we were to allow the world's most aggressive rogue state to continue with all its practices of concealment and deceit and, above all, the development and holding of poisons, diseases and other weapons of mass destruction."
The Foreign Secretary claimed European opposition to the US and British position appeared to be lessening in the face of Dr Blix's conclusion that large quantities of chemical and biological materials remain unaccounted for.