As the Iraq crisis intensifies, important new developments affecting its eventual outcome arise by the day. The Turkish parliament's decision to reject deployment of United States troops on its territory is a major political and military setback for US plans to invade Iraq.
It clearly reflects widespread popular opposition in Turkey to a war. Yesterday's announcement that Iraqi authorities have found stocks of anthrax and VX nerve gas agents which they say were destroyed in 1991 shows that the intense pressure on them to comply with UN disarmament demands is producing results. So does their destruction of a number of al-Samoud missiles.
But unfortunately these developments, far from helping to resolve the political differences over Iraqi compliance and the use of force, are rather intensifying them. It is essential, therefore, to rely on the duly-appointed UN arms inspectors to assess how significant such gestures of Iraqi compliance are. Dr Hans Blix drafted his report to the Security Council on compliance before he had news of the Iraqi decision to destroy the missiles. His conclusion that there had been "very limited" evidence of disarmament had to be revised.
He described the missile decision as "a very significant piece of real disarmament", in a welcome readiness to recognise real movement. In sharp contrast, US and British spokesmen dismissed it as a misleading and token gesture to conceal Iraq's real intentions not to comply. One can easily anticipate similarly dismissive comments on other substantive claims by Iraq, such as those made last night about the biological weapons. In this fog of war propaganda, the only disinterested judgments will come from Dr Blix and his colleagues.
This week the Security Council will be exposed to one of the most intense lobbying exercises it has ever encountered, as it assesses Dr Blix's report and the supplementary judgments by him and his colleagues on the belated and reluctant moves by Iraq to comply. Both the SecurityCouncil and its inspectors must be allowed space, time and opportunity to make their minds up independently. It would be naive to call for an end to the naked political, economic and diplomatic pressure on its members to go along with the US and British case that Iraq cannot be trusted - or with the alternative argument put by France, Germany, Russia and China that the case for the immediate use of force is not proven and would be counter-productive.
But it is essential that countries such as Ireland, so recently on the council and with such a long-standing tradition of putting such store on the UN as a source of international legitimacy, should stand by the integrity of the arms inspectors. If they need more time to assess the credibility of Iraqi compliance, they must be given it. The UN cannot be rushed to a premature and ill-considered judgment on this grave issue. Those who have made a unilateral decision to go to war no matter what the Security Council decides cannot be allowed to dictate its agenda.