With Iraq on a war footing, US President George W. Bush headed for an emergency summit yesterday with close allies Britain and Spain that could start the countdown to an invasion.
President Saddam Hussein divided Iraq into four military districts under his command to prepare for any assault by a quarter of a million US and British troops massed in the Gulf region.
Bush flew from the US for the last-ditch summit on the Azores islands in the Atlantic with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar.
The trio, who have led a hard line in accusing Saddam of failing to give up weapons of mass destruction, say the meeting is not a council of war. A White House spokesman said Bush wanted to "go the extra mile on the diplomatic front."
But hopes were fading for a diplomatic breakthrough. UN arms inspectors were even forced to pull out five of their eight helicopters from Iraq yesterday after insurers cancelled cover because of the growing risks of war, an Iraqi source said.
Germany's foreign ministry urged all nationals in Iraq to leave immediately and said it would close its embassy as soon as they had gone.
Spain and Britain, meanwhile, echoed Bush's view that any invasion of Iraq would be legal under international law even without a new UN Security Council resolution. Saddam says that he has no banned chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
A new resolution by the bitterly divided council "would be politically desirable," Aznar said, "but from the legal point of view it is not indispensable."
In the Vatican City, Pope John Paul made one of his strongest appeals for a peaceful resolution of the conflict, telling Baghdad it had an "urgent duty" to cooperate fully with the international community.
But the 82-year-old pontiff added: "I would also like to remind the member countries of the UN...that the use of force represents a last resort."
US Assistant Secretary of State William Burns said in Egypt that Bush was trying to "find a way to disarm Iraq short of the use of force, but time is clearly running out."
Bush said on Saturday he saw little hope Saddam would admit to the banned weapons programs which the US and Britain say Iraq must declare, or be disarmed by force.
"There is no doubt: we will confront a growing danger, to protect ourselves, to remove a patron and protector of terror, and to keep the peace of the world," he said in a radio address.
Baghdad spat back defiance. "It is impertinent and pompous of these two administrations to take a decision to wage such a dangerous attack with this level of immorality and illegitimacy," the official al-Thawra newspaper said.
Saddam's Revolutionary Command Council ordered the four newly established military districts to "take the necessary steps to repulse and destroy any foreign aggression."
The president's younger son Qusay was put in charge of Baghdad and other central areas of Iraq.
The New York Times reported that the Bush administration had identified Saddam, Qusay, Saddam's other son Uday and six other Iraqi officials as among those who would be put on trial for war crimes or crimes against humanity if captured after any attack.
Portugal's Lusa news agency said the summit, at Lajes airbase on Portugal's Azores islands 1,450km west of Europe, would start at about 4pm (1am today, Taiwan time) and last two hours.
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