Britain hopes to break UN deadlock

Britain is expected to unveil proposals as early as today that it hopes will help break deadlock at the UN on adopting a new resolution forcing Iraq to disarm. They will include specific tests for Baghdad to answer as well as a "very limited" extension of the 17 March deadline set last week.

London has identified a set of "real concrete actions the Iraqis could take to demonstrate quickly that they have made a turnaround" and are serious about disarmament, a source said. There will be no more than 10 of these and they are likely to include actions such as allowing interviews of scientists abroad.

Britain sees the plan as its last hope of bringing round six undecided countries sitting on the Security Council and possibly reaching the nine votes needed to pass the resolution.

Canada, meanwhile, offered its own compromise that would extend the deadline for three more weeks. Then a positive vote of the Council would be needed to declare that Iraq was complying substantially.

Separately, UN inspectors said they had withdrawn two U-2 spy aircraft from Iraqi airspace for "safety reasons" after Baghdad protested that they had been in the air and that the second plane was "hostile". American officials said Iraqi jets escorted one out of Iraqi airspace.

There was still deep uncertainty over how the British proposals would fare. Many of the six uncertain countries may prefer the Canadian version. Seen by The Independent, it states Iraq should also take "imperative steps" that would be set out by Hans Blix, the chief weapons inspector, and "implement those disarmament tasks no later than 15 April 2003". Washington will not tolerate so late a deadline.

The Iraqi ambassador to the UN, Mohammed al-Douri, opened a special meeting of the Security Council open to all UN members last night with a call for governments to resist the resolution and "prevent a catastrophe which has now become imminent". He added: "Iraq has taken the strategic decision to rid itself of weapons of mass destruction."

Speakers at the session repeatedly argued against military action. But the six wavering Council members ­ Angola, Cameroon, Guinea, Chile, Mexico and Pakistan ­ still had no common position. Cameroon requested a 45-day ultimatum for Iraq and Pakistan's Prime Minister, Zafarullah Khan Jamali, made a TV address to declare that it would be "very difficult" for his government to support a war.

Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's ambassador to the UN, said that if Baghdad satisfied the benchmark tests, a second phase would begin in which the actual disarmament would take place.