War on Iraq: The gathering storm recedes

Tony Blair put a brake on the drive towards war with Iraq yesterday by saying the United Nations weapons inspectors should be given more "time and space" to finish their work.

He gave his assessment after the United Nations said bluntly that six weeks of searching for weapons of mass destruction by its inspectors in Iraq had failed to find any incriminating evidence or come up with any "smoking gun" that might point to illegal concealment.

After months of raising the prospect of military action against Saddam Hussein's regime, the Prime Minister deliberately played down the prospect of an imminent attack on Iraq despite the build-up of United States and British forces in the Gulf.

Mr Blair told the Cabinet's weekly meeting that the 27 January date on which Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, will report to the UN was "an important staging post" but "shouldn't be regarded in any sense as a deadline".

The Prime Minister's remarks will be seen as a warning to Washington that he would not necessarily support a war in Iraq in all circumstances. Despite his determination to stand "shoulder to shoulder" with President George Bush, Mr Blair is anxious to avoid what Whitehall calls the "nightmare scenario" of having to decide whether to back unilateral action by America. He has refused to speculate on which way he would jump if that happened.

With no breakthrough by the arms inspectors, the anti-war mood on the Labour benches has hardened since MPs returned from their holiday break on Tuesday.

And clear divisions appear to be opening between the two allies as the Bush administration reacted harshly to the Blix assessment. Washington insisted Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction and that its opinion would not be altered, regardless of what UN weapons inspectors did or did not find.

Mr Blair's assessment of the situation is increasingly in line with that of Mr Blix, and his counterpart at the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed al-Baradei. The inspectors' statement yesterday stood in sharp contrast to renewed claims by the US that Iraq does have armaments prohibited by UN resolutions.

President Bush's spokes-man, Ari Fleischer, said: " We know for a fact that there are weapons there." But he too appeared keen to play down the significance of 27 January, when the inspectors are to present their first formal report on their inspections.

He said Mr Bush had "set no deadline" and, echoing the Prime Minister, said he believed it was important the inspectors had time to do their work. Asked about the absence of a "smoking gun", Mr Fleischer said: "The problem with guns that are hidden is you can't see their smoke. So we will still wait to see what the inspectors find in Iraq and what events in Iraq lead to. We know for a fact that there are weapons there."

Mr Blix told the Security Council he was "not satisfied" with the 12,000-page declaration provided by Iraq on its weapons programmes and he will continue to press Baghdad to address important unanswered questions while the inspections are intensified. After the briefing he said: "We have been there for two months, covering the country in ever-wider sweeps, and we haven't found any smoking guns."

Senior British ministers said last night that Mr Blair's remarks were aimed at three different audiences: the Bush administration, countries wary about military action and the Labour Party.

Mr Blair is worried that war without clear evidence that President Saddam has weapons of mass destruction would be opposed by several European Union countries and key Middle East nations such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia. He would prefer action to be authorised by a second UN resolution, but there is no prospect of that until evidence about weapons emerges or the inspectors' work is thwarted.

The Prime Minister has also been warned by leaders of Labour backbenchers that he would face the biggest rebellion since becoming leader if he backed a war in the short term.One senior Labour MP said: "It would be a different matter if we get the evidence and UN authority for action."Downing Street also denied Mr Blair was "going soft" over military action, and said London had not urged Washington to delay a war until the autumn.

Mr Blair's official spokesman said: "We are in the middle of a process. The UN inspectors have just, at the beginning of the year, got their full complement of inspectors there."