Mr Ahmad Chalabi, a prominent Iraqi opposition leader, said yesterday that Iraq was obstructing the UN weapons inspectors and that chief inspector Dr Hans Blix's criticisms of the authorities was fully justified.
Mr Chalabi, who leads the pro-US opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress, has been meeting other opposition leaders in the Iranian capital, Tehran, to prepare a 65-member congress of Iraqi exiles in northern Iraq.
"Blix has the right idea," he told a news conference, referring to a report to the Security Council in which Dr Hans Blix sharply criticised Iraq for not giving enough information on its past weapons of mass destruction programmes.
"Saddam is obstructing and his reports are not complete. He continues to lie and deflect.
"This process has demonstrated that Saddam has the weapons and I believe that the international community should come to a decision as soon as possible about measures to force Saddam to comply," Mr Chalabi said.
In the Swiss mountain resort of Davos, other leaders of the divided Iraqi opposition said UN inspectors should be given more time to complete their search and help to avoid a US attack on Iraq.
"If they want more time, they should be given more time. The Iraqi people have suffered enough.
"We hope the whole thing can be resolved peacefully," said Mr Adnan Pachachi, a former foreign minister.
"I have no doubt that there will be a regime change very soon either way. People in Iraq are fed up. They want change.
"Change is going to come, it's inevitable," he added.
Mr Adil Abdul Mahdi, of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said the opposition wanted political change in Iraq, but not through war.
He said that a group elected by the opposition at a recent conference in London would meet in northern Iraq on February 15th to co-ordinate strategy.
The sentiments were shared by other opposition figures in northern Iraq.
A senior Iraqi Kurdish official there said Dr Blix's report signalled that "war is coming".
"It seems that Blix's report implies that war is coming because America and the British and so many other countries no longer trust Iraq anymore," said Mr Fuad Masum, a senior figure in the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan in Sulaymaniya.
Mr Masum asked for equipment to protect Kurdish people from chemical attack.
"We have suffered from chemical attack before, so it is our right to have this kind of equipment.
"I am very serious when I say that we need to protect ourselves," he said.
The meeting is following up on the London conference, during which the groups formed a 65-member committee - to which a further 10 names were later added - that could form the basis of a new Iraqi government if President Saddam Hussein is ousted.