BRITAIN: British Foreign Office Minister Mr Mike O'Brien has insisted war with Iraq is neither imminent or inevitable. And he appears to have fuelled speculation about tensions between London and Washington by suggesting that a "very different" situation would arise if Iraq complied with international law and allowed unfettered access to UN arms inspectors.
The Minister's comments seemed in marked contrast to the repeated insistence of senior American officials that "regime change" will remain the goal of American policy in Iraq, whether or not the inspectors go back in.
And they will hardly have been welcomed in Downing Street, as politicians and military experts maintained public opposition to British support for an American-led war, and as Iraq made an overt effort to exploit mounting European anxieties by urging Britain to "play a very positive, crucial role in convincing the Americans" to seek a "peaceful" resolution to the problem.
Speaking from Libya yesterday, where he sought to enlist Col Gadafy to the war against international terrorism, Mr O'Brien said: "It (war) is not imminent and it is not inevitable. Nobody wants war for the sake of it. We understand there are issues in relation to Iraq. In particular we need to make sure the inspectors go in. The ball is now in Saddam Hussein's court. He must ensure that the inspectors go in to Iraq and that international law is complied with. If international law is complied with, of course the position will then be very different."
Downing Street insisted nothing had changed as a result of the Minister's remarks. A Number 10 spokesman quoted Mr O'Brien's assertion in the same BBC interview that "regime change might be desirable" as fully in line with Mr Tony Blair's Texas declaration that "the world would be a better place without Saddam Hussein."
Close observers also recalled that similar differences in emphasis had been apparent last autumn as Britain and America defined their war aims before sending troops into Afghanistan.
However Mr Blair's potential difficulty in framing justification for any strikes against Iraq was underlined again yesterday when the former Ministry of Defence chief, Sir Michael Quinlan, said existing UN resolutions would never be accepted by the Security Council as justification for a war ten years after they were passed.
Insisting that such actions would fail the tests of what constituted "a just war", Sir Michael also argued that to abandon a successful policy of international containment would be "bizarre".
Mr O'Brien's visit to Libya was the first by a British minister since the shooting of policewoman Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan People's Bureau in London in 1983.
Libya indicated it could be ready to talk about compensating victims of the 1998 mid-air Lockerbie bombing, Foreign Minister Mr Abdel Rahman Shalgham said after meeting Mr O'Brien last night.
Derek Scally adds from Berlin: Germany's Foreign Minister, Mr Joschka Fischer, has said US plans to attack Iraq carry "a large, nearly incalculable risk".
He said the danger posed by Saddam Hussein had not changed in recent months and asked whether the US had grasped fully the consequences of an attack.
"The United States has the military means to force a regime change in Iraq - but does one realise the risks?" asked Mr Fischer in an interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.
"It would bring with it a total reorganisation of the Middle East - not only in military but political terms."
Toppling Saddam Hussein could lead to a decades-long US military presence in the country, he said. "Whether the US is prepared for that is more than open."
The Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schröder, has already said Germany would not participate in what he called a "military misadventure" in Iraq, even if a strike had a UN mandate.