Britain and US block return of inspectors as UN split deepens

America and Britain delayed the early return of United Nations weapons inspectors to Iraq yesterday as the rift with other members of the Security Council widened.

With the Bush administration insisting it is not prepared to countenance the return of inspectors unless Iraq first allows unfettered access to areas including Saddam Hussein's sprawling presidential palaces, Hans Blix, the chief weapons inspector, acknowledged to the Security Council that "loose ends" remained in the agreement he reached with Iraq on Tuesday.

He later said he was unlikely to send inspectors into Iraq on 19 October as planned. Mr Blix and Mohammed Elbaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, both said the full backing of the Security Council was needed.

The inspectors have the legal right to begin their work under existing Security Council resolutions, Mr Blix stressed, but he added that it would be "awkward" to begin while a new mandate was still under discussion.

Mr Blix, who will hold talks with the US administration in Washington today, reported on his agreement with the Iraqis at a tense meeting of the 15-member council as Britain and the US continued to lobby members to pass a new resolution tightening conditions for inspections.

Huge obstacles remained, however, with Russia and France publicly opposing the wording of a draft Anglo-American text now circulating in New York. That text includes a clear threat of force if Iraq fails to comply with a harsher inspections regime, including armed guards, no-fly and no-drive zones, plus ground and air transit corridors to be enforced by the UN or its members, including the US.

Moscow urged early inspections. The US-British draft "only strengthened our belief in the correctness of our position in favour of the soonest resumption of inspection activities in Iraq", the Deputy Foreign Minister, Alexander Saltanov, said.

But Tony Blair appealed yesterday to France, Russia and China to approve a new resolution on Iraq and warned them that failure to reach agreement would make a war more likely. The Prime Minister urged the international community not to play into President Saddam's hands by sending weapons inspectors back to Iraq under existing UN resolutions.

Insisting that a new mandate was needed, Mr Blair said the existing remit was "defective" because the presidential palaces were not fully covered. "It is no good allowing inspectors access to 99 per cent of Iraq if the weapons of mass destruction are actually located and stored and worked on in the remaining 1 per cent of Iraq." He demanded "total, unfettered, unobstructed access" to the whole country.

President George Bush said military intervention remained his "last option" for dealing with Iraq. But insisting on a tough UN resolution, he added: "The United Nations must know that the will of this nation is strong." The White House said that the inspectors would be "nothing more than tourists" unless the rules were toughened.

Mr Blair said: "The harder the international community is at the moment, the clearer the message we send, the greater the likelihood there is of avoiding conflict." Diplomacy not backed by force was "not merely useless, it's often counter-productive", he said. "If we appear to give some mixed messages from the international community then he [President Saddam] will misread the signals."

Mr Blair refused to discuss the detailed negotiations at the UN but was "optimistic that we will get a strong and good resolution". If the UN route failed, he warned, Iraq's weapons would have to be dealt with "one way or the other". But the Prime Minister distanced himself from the US goal of securing regime change in Baghdad. "I think it would be a fantastic thing if we got rid of Saddam but the purpose is disarmament," he said.

He denied that Britain could be sucked into military action out of loyalty to America. "I wouldn't ever commit this country to take military action if I didn't think it was the right thing to do," he said.

"I feel a huge sense of responsibility for that, which is why we should not put British troops in that position unless absolutely necessary. The fact that Saddam may feel that he should use those weapons can't be a reason for not disarming him of them."

The Prime Minister defended the detention of alleged al-Qa'ida suspects at the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. "We are getting information the whole time, partly from those people imprisoned, partly from other sources, which it is important for us to investigate.

"I know it is ... difficult to carry on with them in that position. But on the other hand, people would not understand it if we still had genuine and real questions to ask them, which we do, and we passed up a chance of doing so."

He believed the prisoners were being held in reasonable conditions. He said: "As far as I am aware, they are being treated with every consideration for them as human beings."