Despite President Clinton's deepening entanglement in a sex scandal, signs are growing that the West is moving towards military action against Iraq, diplomats and analysts say.
While Baghdad's government-controlled media mock Mr Clinton's "political bankruptcy and moral fall", the United States and Britain are preparing for a possible major air strike on Iraq, although no final decision has been taken, the sources say.
"On Iraq, there is certainly no policy vacuum in Washington. The President has set a clear course and it is being worked through methodically," a western diplomat said.
"Saddam Hussein would be very foolish to gamble that this scandal will make the United States any less resolute towards him. On the contrary, this is the one issue on which even a weakened president can be sure of bipartisan Congressional backing," the diplomat said.
The head of the UN team in charge of removing Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, Mr Richard Butler, told the Security Council last Friday on returning from Baghdad that he saw no prospect of President Saddam Hussein complying with its resolutions.
On Saturday, Mr Clinton took a break from the Lewinsky scandal to chair a meeting of his top advisers on Iraq. Officials said they decided to consult US allies and partners in the Gulf before any decision on military action. Diplomats said Washington wanted Iraq to be given one final warning, if possible by the UN Security Council.
Perhaps the clearest indication that military action is moving up the agenda was the urgency with which Russia and France, Iraq's two main "friends" on the Security Council, swung into diplomatic activity yesterday.
President Yeltsin sent a special representative to Baghdad to try to defuse the crisis and President Chirac, visiting India, urged Iraq to co-operate with the UN and avoid confrontation.
Diplomats said Paris continued to argue that bombing Iraq would alienate the Arab world and solve nothing, but they said other Western governments were increasingly convinced that military action was essential to show that the international community could not be defied on such an important issue as weapons of mass destruction.
The Russian Foreign Minister, Mr Yevgeny Primakov, brokered a diplomatic way out last November from a previous crisis after Mr Saddam expelled American UN weapons inspectors. But that resolved nothing because as soon as they returned to Baghdad, Iraq barred them from inspecting so-called presidential sites - sprawling palace complexes where western officials suspect chemical and biological weapons-making materials are concealed.
Arab media and diplomats have expressed concern that the sex scandal could push Mr Clinton to take more drastic action against Iraq to deflect criticism at home, while being even more reluctant to take on a recalcitrant Israel over stalled talks with the Palestinians.
"That seems quite plausible," one European government Middle East policy analyst said. "The Republicans in Congress would back him in a strike on Iraq but not if he took on [the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin] Netanyahu."