The United States has defended a deal it made to take Iraq's weapons declaration and speed it to Washington.
The United States took the 12,000-page declaration after initially agreeing to let UN inspectors read it and eliminate material that could be used to promote the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
Council diplomats said the United States changed its mind and lobbied to get the entire uncensored document in the hands of the five permanent members - the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France - who are all nuclear powers and already have access to such information.
The decision to hand over the Security Council's copy of the declaration to the United States was announced on Sunday by Colombia's UN Ambassador, Mr Alfonso Valdivieso, the current council president, a few hours after copies of the declaration arrived at UN headquarters from Baghdad.
Its UN ambassador told the BBC the Bush administration's aim was to provide expertise to help weapons inspectors and other Security Council members "in making as expeditious as possible an analysis of the Iraqi declaration".
Diplomats said the Bush administration scanned the declaration, put it on discs, and provided them to the other four permanent members. The original was returned early on Tuesday to the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission in New York.
But the 10 non-permanent members, who are elected for two-year terms and have no veto power, will still only get a censored version.
Several, including Syria, Mexico and Norway, were unhappy, and Syria has announced that it plans to make "a very strong protest" to the Security Council.
AP