Iraq was continuing its last-ditch efforts to avert a US-led war with the destruction yesterday of more banned missiles as Pope John Paul II prepared a personal peace plea to the UN.
The pontiff made it known he would ask to address the UN Security Council in person if his message to US President George W. Bush failed to stop Washington's war plans.
Meanwhile, French President Jacques Chirac, another key figure in the anti-war campaign, pressed Iraq to do more to meet UN demands, but Britain said the current disarmament measures were not enough to halt the impending war.
Turkey began to feel the economic backlash as the Istanbul stock market went into free fall in response to parliament's refusal to allow the US to deploy its troops in the country and calls for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to stand down were growing in the Gulf region.
Iraq scrapped six more banned al-Samoud 2 missiles yesterday, bringing the total in three days to 16.
Uday al-Tai, the director general of Iraq's information ministry, said six of between seven and nine scheduled to be disposed of during the day had been destroyed and a casting chamber used in the manufacturing process would be dismantled.
UN inspectors are supervising the process.
Baghdad says there are about 100 al-Samoud 2 missiles, which UN experts say are banned because they breach the 150km range limit set by previous resolutions.
Compliance with the order to destroy the rockets was seen as a key test of whether Iraq was cooperating with the UN inspectors sent in late last November to investigate its alleged programme of weapons of mass destruction.
The Iraqis also pledged to account for long-missing anthrax and VX nerve agents. "They informed us that they will submit a report, a more detailed report, in about a week concerning anthrax and VX," UN spokesman Hiro Ueki said.
Iraq says it scrapped tonnes of anthrax and VX agent in 1991 but this was never verified by the UN, raising questions as to whether the regime was telling the truth.
Pope John Paul II will ask to address the UN Security Council in person if President Bush does not heed his message over Iraq.
The question of a personal address was already brought up in talks two weeks ago between the Pope and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, a Vatican source said.
Cardinal Pio Laghi, a friend of the Bush family, left for Washington earlier yesterday with a message to the US president from the pontiff.
French President Jacques Chirac appeared to take a firmer line on Iraq when he said in Algiers that Baghdad must show more cooperation with UN weapons inspectors.
"France wants to give peaceful disarmament every possible chance," he said in a speech to the Algerian parliament. "But Iraq must do more, cooperate more, and do so more actively. We must keep up the strong pressure in order to achieve, together and peacefully, the goal on which we are agreed: to eliminate weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."
Turkish share prices slumped more than 10 percent early yesterday in the wake of parliament's rejection of a move to allow the deployment of US troops in Turkey, traders said.
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