Chief UN weapons inspectors seeking guarantees on such key issues as spy flights held a second day of talks in Iraq yesterday that could decide whether their report this week to the Security Council triggers war.
After talks on Saturday, chief inspector Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the UN nuclear watchdog, were locked in discussions with Iraqi officials in Baghdad as news emerged of a Franco-German peace initiative.
Germany confirmed forging a joint initiative that could block any UN Security Council resolution authorizing military action against Iraq. A German magazine said it involved sending thousands of UN peacekeeping troops to Iraq.
In NATO, members were in turmoil over moves to defend Iraq's neighbor and alliance member Turkey in the event of a US-led war to rid President Saddam Hussein's country of its alleged nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs.
Deep US-European divisions over Iraq were exposed on Saturday when US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who declared he knew nothing of the Franco-German initiative, branded as "inexcusable" French, German and Belgian moves to block protection for Turkey.
Under NATO procedures, each of the alliance's 19 members has until 5pm Taiwan time today to raise objections, failing which military planning to defend Turkey would begin automatically.
If objections are raised, Turkey could invoke a rule under which allies would be all but obliged to defend its territory.
Rumsfeld told an annual security conference in Munich that 12 years of diplomacy, economic sanctions and limited military strikes had failed to disarm Iraq and the world would know in "days or weeks" if war was needed.
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer told the conference Berlin was still not convinced of the need for war with Iraq.
Germany's leading news magazine Der Spiegel said Berlin and Paris were working on a plan to try to avert war in Iraq that would compel Baghdad to admit UN troops to enforce disarmament and tighter sanctions.
It said the idea had originated in the office of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Berlin and Paris had been working on the details of the initiative in secret talks since the beginning of the year.
German government sources said the initiative built on proposals made by French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin this week to intensify weapons inspections in Iraq and offer French reconnaissance planes to support them.
Blix and ElBaradei will report to the UN Security Council on Friday. A critical report could start the countdown for a US-led invasion to disarm Iraq.
Iraq relented last week on private interviews of Iraqi scientists, allowing the inspectors to carry out such questioning.
But it has so far given little on the issue of high-altitude overflights by U-2 spyplanes.
Baghdad has said it could not guarantee the planes' safety while US and British warplanes patrol two "no-fly" zones in Iraqi skies.
In Baghdad, a UN source said Iraq had handed over documents to Blix and ElBaradei during a first round of talks on Saturday.
"The Iraqi side gave us documents. We will work on them tonight and will discuss them tomorrow," the source said.
Blix and ElBaradei are in Baghdad for the first time since US Secretary of State Colin Powell spelled out to the Security Council last Wednesday Washington's case against Iraq.
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