Iraq is sure of US attack

The Iraqi government will expand its cooperation with UN weapons inspectors under a new agreement worked out in two days of talks, but it's sure the US military will attack anyway, an Iraqi vice president said Tuesday.

"It is possible any minute, any second that while the inspectors are still here, the aggression will take place," Taha Yassim Ramadan said.

The United States, which does not believe Iraq's claim it has no more biological, chemical or nuclear weapons, has threatened war against Iraq if it fails to disarm voluntarily.

In the negotiations Sunday and Monday, Iraq gave ground to international arms controllers on procedural snares in the two-month-old UN monitoring regime. But it will be left to teams of UN and Iraqi experts, in the months to come, to work out more complex issues of accounting for old stocks of doomsday weapons.

The talks led by chief UN arms inspector Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the UN nuclear agency, were a prelude to a crucial report they must make to the UN Security Council on Monday, on progress made in the UN effort to ensure Iraq no longer has banned weapons programs.

If the council judges Iraq's cooperation to be poor, that could set the stage for finding the Baghdad government in "material breach" of UN edicts, and for a move toward military action against it.

In another development Tuesday, the Syrian news agency reported that foreign ministers of Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Jordan and Turkey will meet in Istanbul this week to discuss ways of averting a US-led war against Iraq.

To try to forestall threats of war, Iraqi officials in the Baghdad talks made concessions in a handful of procedural disputes, most notably an agreement to encourage Iraqi weapons scientists, engineers and other specialists to submit to private interviews with UN inspectors.

But Secretary of State Colin Powell played down their significance, calling the concessions "just more of the same.... Only under pressure does Iraq respond." The United States has threatened war even without UN support.

The UN teams have found that every potential witness approached thus far declined to be interviewed without an Iraqi official present, an arrangement inspectors believe keeps the specialists from being candid.

PTI adds: The US has failed to win support for an early military action against Iraq in the UN Security Council with even its NATO allies - France, having the veto power, and Germany opposed to an American offensive to disarm Saddam Hussein.

Washington was taken aback by the blunt tone of French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin who told the Council that Paris will not support any resolution for military action and accused the Bush administration of "impatience."

Though France, the current president of the Council, did not rule out the possibility of use of veto, diplomats expect it to abstain during a vote on the issue.

During meetings between the two, de Villepin told US Secretary of State Colin Powell that America did not have majority in the Council for a resolution giving explicit authority to use force to be adopted.

Nine positive votes without any member vetoing the proposition is needed for any resolution to be adopted by the 15-member Council.