Bush and Blair try to find allies

President Bush and Tony Blair today launched an intense diplomatic offensive to win international support for action against Iraq.

Their prime targets - for now - are Russia, China and France who, with the US and Britain, make up the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.

The Prime Minister is expected to visit Moscow next month, but both he and Mr Bush will be piling on the pressure well before then.

President Bush is strongly considering asking for a UN resolution to set a deadline for Iraq to open its weapons sites to unfettered inspection and to apply "punitive action" if that is refused.

"The relevance of the United Nations itself is at stake," Mr Bush intends to tell the UN next week, according to a Washington official who has seen a draft of the speech.

The exact nature of the punishment to be meted out to Saddam Hussein should the UN pass a resolution and should he ignore it, will not be spelled out, not least because a reference to military action could trigger a veto from Russia or China.

But one plan is for "coercive inspections" which would force Iraq to open its suspect sites by placing thousands of troops on hand ready for rapid attack if the inspectors are kept out.

In London, as Mr Blair prepared to fly to meet President Bush on Saturday, pressure grew for Parliament to be recalled. Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy said today that it was "absolutely imperative" for MPs to debate the issue of peace or war after the Prime Minister's return from Camp David.

Some Labour MPs were demanding that Parliament should be brought back tomorrow ahead of the Prime Minister's trip. But there seemed little realistic chance of that happening.

However, Church leaders also weighed in with both the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr George Carey and the Archbishop of Westminster raising doubts over military action.

Dr Carey has set out his concerns in a private letter to the Prime Minister. The Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, writing in The Times today, warns that war could set the Arab world against the West.

Mr Blair's round trip will take just 21 hours as he flies to meet Mr Bush, holds five hours of talks and then returns overnight to Aberdeen on Sunday for a planned weekend stay with the Queen at Balmoral, cut short by the crisis.

Downing Street has denied that the talks with President Bush are a council of war. One source said the two leaders would not be unrolling maps of the Gulf. But with American battle tanks and other armour and artillery already heading for the region all the signs pointed to a relentless build-up to decisive action.

The hawks in the White House and elsewhere in Washington are in no doubt. They say there is little chance Saddam will comply with any kind of ultimatum, whether it comes from Washington or the UN. And President Bush's spokesman has made it clear he has decided to go for a regime change in Iraq, using military force unless the Iraqi leader is deposed by other means.

Meanwhile it has emerged that Iraq has developed a number of novel devices to spray chemical and biological toxins from aircraft in the event of an invasion, Washington officials have disclosed. They say Iraq's expanding capabilities also seem to offer new ways to "terrorise" civilian populations, including cities in Israel, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

The Washington Post reports that Iraq has built a number of unmanned drone aircraft tested for use in biological and chemical attacks. Iraq has also converted cropdusting gear into a germ-spraying device mounted on helicopters, according to United Nations documents. Another delivery weapon is the "drop tank" that can be mounted on Iraq's fastest fighter planes.