U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell is expected to say later today that Iraq's weapons dossier contains omissions that amount to a violation of a U.N. disarmament resolution, U.S. officials say.
It was unclear whether Powell would also say that Iraq was in "material breach" of the resolution, officials said, but they insisted this would not be an immediate trigger for war.
They also said the U.S. military had been told to notify up to 50,000 troops that they may be sent to the Gulf early next year as the United States builds its forces in the region.
The White House said Powell would issue Washington's response on Thursday to Iraq's 12,000-page arms disclosure, which U.S. officials said had failed to disclose suspected chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs as required.
Powell and the U.S ambassador to the United Nations, John Negroponte, were to announce the U.S. position after chief U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix makes a presentation on the Iraqi declaration to the 15-member U.N. Security Council, the officials said. Powell will be in Washington and Negroponte in New York.
U.N. weapons inspectors are expected to tell the Security Council they have questions about gaps in Iraq's new arms declaration but refrain from giving a negative assessment, diplomats said.
Blix, the chairman of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, known as UNMOVIC, and Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, are scheduled to brief the council for the first time since Baghdad submitted its weapons document on December 7 and arms inspections resumed in Iraq last month.
Powell told reporters he was not optimistic Iraq would cooperate with demands to disarm but the United States would work through the Security Council on deciding what to do in the next few weeks.
Powell's comments suggested the United States did not for the moment intend to take any unilateral steps. "Our analysis of the Iraqi declaration to this point ... shows problems with the declaration, gaps, omissions and all of this is troublesome," Powell said at a news conference.
"Iraq was given an opportunity in U.N. Resolution 1441 to cooperate with the international community to stop deceiving the world with respect to its weapons of mass destruction," Powell said.
The United States is building a powerful military force in the Gulf region in case Bush, who has said he would like to see Iraqi President Saddam Hussein ousted, decides to go to war.
Officials said Bush had made no final decision on the preliminary plan to send 50,000 troops to the region, but the United States was closely watching the U.N. arms inspections in Iraq.
On international markets, oil and gold prices rose to fresh peaks as U.S. signals that Bush would declare Iraq in violation of the resolution deepened fears of war. Stocks slumped on Wall Street.
In Iraq, U.N. inspectors, starting the fourth week of their hunt for Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction, searched at least nine sites