The British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has urged the United Nations to take decisive action against Iraq for defying its authority or risk being reduced to an impotent talking-shop.
"The UN's authority has to be underpinned by force of arms," Straw, whose country is a close military ally of the United States, told the 190-nation General Assembly.
"For two decades, (Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein's regime has defied and frustrated every attempt to enforce the international rule of law," Straw said.
Iraq had fought wars of aggression against two of its neighbours, fired missiles at five countries in the region and used poison gas against its own people, he said.
"Saddam Hussein has persistently mocked the authority of this United Nations," Straw declared. "So those of us who believe in an active international community cannot stand by and do nothing while Iraq continues to defy the U.N."
Straw echoed US President George W Bush's argument, set out in a speech to the General Assembly on Thursday, that the United Nations risked irrelevance if it failed to force Iraq to respect Security Council resolutions on disarmament.
"We cannot let Iraq go on defying a decade of Security Council resolutions," he said, referring to U.N. demands at the end of the 1991 Gulf War for Baghdad to scrap its chemical, biological, nuclear and ballistic weapons programmes.
"If we do, we will find that our resolutions are dismissed by aggressors everywhere as mere words," Straw said.
Iraq says it has no weapons of mass destruction and refuses to accept the unconditional return of U.N. arms inspectors who left the country just before U.S.-British air strikes in 1998.
"We must require Iraq to readmit inspectors with unfettered access," Straw said. "We have to be clear to Iraq and to ourselves about the consequences which will flow from a failure by Iraq to meet its obligations."
Britain will play a key role in drafting one or more new Security Council resolutions likely to set a deadline for Iraq to accept arms inspectors and comply with demands for the destruction of any banned weapons, or face military action.