US: The United States yesterday declared that Iraq was in "material breach" of the United Nations resolution on weapons inspections, language that is used diplomatically to justify military action.
However, the US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, declared yesterday that this would not be an immediate trigger for war, though it had brought closer the day when Iraq would have to face "serious consequences" for its response to the resolution.
Baghdad's arms declaration, delivered to the UN on December 8th, "totally fails" to meet Security Council Resolution 1441 calling for an accurate, full and complete inventory of weapons programmes, Mr Powell told a news conference at the State Department.
Iraq's 12,000-page declaration was "a catalogue of recycled information and flagrant omissions" and "this is a new material breach" on top of several other breaches in the past.
The declaration was debated at a special Security Council meeting in New York yesterday. As he emerged, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, ambassador to the UN from Britain, America's closest ally, declined to categorise omissions in the declaration as a "material breach".
Other member states, including Ireland, rejected the conclusion that Iraq was in new material breach. Under Resolution 1441, passed on November 8th, false statements or omissions in the declaration - coupled with a failure to comply with inspections - would be a "material breach" of Iraq's obligations to disarm.
Recalling that Resolution 1441 calls for "serious consequences" for non-compliance, Mr Powell said that Iraq's "new lie" has "brought it closer to the day when it will have to face these consequences," and "the world will not wait forever."
The US would continue to work with the weapons inspectors "to see whether or not more evidence can be brought forward to make the case to the council that Iraq has totally missed this opportunity," he said.
There was no calendar deadline for Iraq, Mr Powell said, but there was a practical limit to how much longer they could go down the road of non-co-operation.
Observers believe the most likely deadline for a US decision on war with Iraq is January 27th, the date the weapons inspectors are due to give their first full assessment to the UN of renewed inspections.
Dr Hans Blix, head of the chemical and biological weapons inspection team known as UNMOVIC, and Mr Muhammad El Baradei, head of the nuclear weapons team IAEA, gave their initial assessment to the full council yesterday.
Dr Blix said: "UNMOVIC at this point is neither in a position to confirm Iraq's statements nor in possession of evidence to disprove it," according to his briefing notes, which have been seen by The Irish Times.
His overall impression was that not much new had been provided by Baghdad but there were "inconsistencies and issues that will need clarification", particularly concerning a table of the import of bacterial growth media used in the production of anthrax, he told the council.
"The table has been omitted from the current declaration and the reasons for the omission need to be explained."
The US ambassador to the UN, Mr John Negroponte, promised at the meeting to give the inspectors US intelligence on weapons, according to one diplomatic source.
In Washington Mr Powell made several claims about possible stockpiles of banned weapons about which Baghdad was silent.
Before UN inspectors left Iraq in 1998, Mr Powell said, "they concluded that Iraq could have produced 26,000 litres of anthrax, that is three times the amount Iraq declared and "would be enough to kill several million people."
Baghdad had also admitted it had manufactured 19,180 litres of a biological agent called botulinum toxin, but UN inspectors "had determined the Iraqis could have produced 38,260 additional litres. The Iraqi declaration was also silent on these "missing supplies".
Mr Powell said there was nothing about precursors from which Iraq "could have produced up to 500 tons of mustard gas, sarin gas and VX nerve gas". He said Iraq had tried to obtain aluminium tubes that could be used to enrich uranium but there was no information about this in the declaration.
President Bush will make a major speech today on Washington's reaction.