Security Council split as Blix returns to brief on arms dossier

The chief United Nations weapons inspector, Hans Blix, returns before his political masters in the UN Security Council today for the first time since his inspectors returned to Iraq to resume their hunt for weapons of mass destruction three weeks ago.

Mr Blix, and his Egyptian colleague, Mohammed al-Baradei, who leads the UN team of nuclear experts in Iraq, are to report on their initial findings since Iraq handed over its 12,000-page document, which is supposed to provide a "full, complete and final" declaration of all of its illegal weapons programmes.

France stated again that it was up to the Council, not individual countries, to decide the next move should Iraq seem to have failed to obey Resolution 1441. Dominique de Villepin, the Foreign Minister, said France backed a "collective security policy" in dealing with Iraq.

If President Saddam Hussein reneged on his obligations, the inspectors should report to the Council, at which point it was "up to the Council, and the Council alone, to draw the conclusions," M. de Villepin said, in a warning to Britain and the US not to go it alone.

Mr Blix's spokesman, Ewen Buchanan, said yesterday: "We will report objectively to the Security Council, but it's up to them to decide what constitutes a material breach, not to us."

The Swedish diplomat is likely to need more time to assess the Iraqi document and check out its omissions through the continuing snap inspections on the ground which started on 25 November. He has two months from that date to report to the Security Council, although he can update the 15 members at any time in case of a serious Iraqi obstruction.

A spokesman for Mr al-Baradei said yesterday that as far as the nuclear dossier of 2,400 pages was concerned, further inspections were needed to assess whether Iraq was in "material breach" of its obligations. Washington and London may say today that they have incontrovertible intelligence proof that Iraq is in material breach already, by failing to come clean on its banned weapons programmes in its document.

But the Security Council, in Resolution 1441, which ordered Iraq to comply with the UN disarmament demands or face military action, ensured that "false statements or omissions" alone by Iraq would not be enough to provoke war.

Russia and France – who have traditionally supported Iraq on the Council – also ensured that omissions should be coupled with an Iraqi obstruction of the UN weapons inspectors on the ground to warrant a "material breach" declaration.

Iraq used its declaration to reiterate its long-standing assertion that it no longer holds long-range missiles or chemical and biological weapons, and that its nuclear programme had been for peaceful purposes only.

But another row within the Security Council looms over the "censored" version provided to the 10 non-permanent members, after sensitive information on how to build weapons of mass destruction was expunged from the text. Syria said last night it would return its sanitised version and insist on receiving the full text obtained by the US, UK, China, Russia and France.

Meanwhile the Security Council urged Iraq yesterday to resolve issues with Kuwait left over from its invasion in 1990, including accounting for missing Kuwaitis and returning seized property. The appeal came a week after Iraq unexpectedly invited Yuli Vorontsov, the UN envoy trying to resolve the issues left over from the 1991 Gulf War, to visit Baghdad for the first time.