The British Prime Minister Tony Blair today he was "determined to hold firm" on Iraq, a day after US Defense Secretary Mr Donald Rumsfeld said it was "unclear" if British troops would join a war against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Speaking in the House of Commons, Mr Blair - who has been US President George W. Bush's staunchest ally on Iraq - acknowledged that "it's true that the US could go it alone."
But he reiterated that he was working "flat out" to put a new Iraq resolution to a vote at the UN Security Council - even if France and Russia have said they would veto such a motion.
"I am determined that we hold firm to the course that we have set out," said the prime minister, who was to meet later today with Germany's anti-war chancellor Mr Gerhard Schroeder.
He added: "What is at stake here is not whether the US goes it alone or not, but whether the international community is prepared to back up the instructions it gave to Saddam Hussein" to give up weapons of mass destruction.
"The worst thing that could happen is for him to defy that will (of the United Nations) and then for no action" to be taken, he said, in an implicit criticism of the French and Russian stands.
Mr Blair confirmed that his government was putting forward to the UN "a very clear set of tests" for Saddam to fulfill to avert a war that many analysts fear could start as early as next week.
Those tests could include demands to produce anthrax stores or evidence that they have been destroyed, to allow UN interviews with scientists outside Iraq, and to produce unmanned drone planes or evidence that they have been destroyed, he said.
Foreign Office Minister Mr Mike O'Brien said earlier today that another test - as explained to a closed meeting of Labour MPs - would be for Saddam to go on television to publicly renounce chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
AFP