The UN Security Council meeting on Iraq ended in disarray yesterday, with foreign ministers failing to agree to a suggestion from France for arms inspections to continue for four weeks.
Despite the diminished prospects of support for a second resolution in the immediate days ahead authorising war against Iraq, the UK and the US intend to press ahead with a new resolution early next week, a spokeswoman for the British mission to the UN said last night.
This would find Iraq in material breach of Resolution 1441, and call for serious consequences, a diplomatic term for war.
With deep divisions in the Security Council laid bare at yesterday's review by the UN weapons inspectors, there is now a distinct prospect of a veto from one of the five permanent members.
Three of the council members with veto-power - France, China and Russia - demanded more time for weapons inspections after the inspectors reported that they had not found any weapons of mass destruction.
The French Foreign Minister, Mr Dominique de Villepin, and the Russian Foreign Minister, Mr Igor Ivanov, said they would not support a resolution authorising war. Diplomats and observers greeted the remarks of the French and Russian Foreign Ministers with rare applause.
The UN is to hold an open debate on Tuesday as UN ambassadors negotiate behind the scenes to try to find a compromise.
The Government said last night it would support offering extra time to weapons inspectors in Iraq if the Iraqi regime could prove that it would fully co-operate with the investigation.
Anti-war protest will take place in world capitals today, including New York, where a court has banned a march but allowed a demonstration near UN headquarters. The Dublin march is expected to draw up to 20,000 people, organisers say.
Last night, the US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, said that the foreign ministers would report back to their governments over the weekend.
He said the use of force could not be ruled out and that continued inspections were not the answer. "We cannot wait for one of these terrible weapons to turn up in our cities."
The former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson, writing in today's Irish Times, cautioned against any action not sanctioned by the Security Council.
"War, as horrible as it inevitably is, remains as one option, but only in the gravest of situations, when threats are clear and present, when all other approaches have been fully exhausted, and when the combined will of the world's governments and their people stand behind it."
The chief weapons inspector, Dr Hans Blix, told the UN there had been considerable improvements in co-operation by Baghdad but inspectors would demand from Iraq the destruction of missiles found to have a range exceeding permitted limits.
He also said he had not yet received a full accounting of possible stocks left over from Iraq's previous chemical and biological weapons programmes.
The chief nuclear inspector, Dr Mohamed ElBaradei, told the council that inspectors found no evidence Iraq had resumed its nuclear weapons programme and said inspectors could do their job without Iraq's full co-operation.
Dr Blix cast doubt on evidence Mr Powell provided to the council last week claiming that Iraq had cleaned up suspect sites before inspectors arrived.
In Iraq, President Saddam Hussein decreed a ban on all weapons of mass destruction from Iraq.
The move was dismissed by the White House as of no consequence.
President Bush showed no signs of backing down in his confrontation with Iraq.
"Saddam Hussein has ties to terrorist networks. Saddam Hussein is a danger and that's why he will be disarmed, one way or another."
In a statement last night, a Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman said: "The Minister (Mr Cowen) repeated, as he said in the Dáil last Tuesday, that if the inspectors considered that more time could serve a useful purpose he would support them.
"However, as Hans Blix has made clear inspections in the absence of full Iraqi co-operation will not secure disarmament. Inspections could take forever without the necessary co-operation," he went on.
The Security Council must now outline precisely what Iraq has to do to meet its demands, how long it has to do it, and how the council "will discharge its responsibilities" if Iraq does not comply, he added.
Today's anti-war march in Dublin will begin from the Garden of Remembrance in Parnell Square at 2.0 p.m. and end up with a rally at the Central Bank on Dame Street at 4.45 p.m.