Europe urges US to win UN backing for military strike

Europe has urged America not to act alone in its conflict with Iraq, and launched a concerted appeal for Washington to win United Nations approval before any military strike.

Senior European Union politicians united yesterday in stressing that UN support would be vital if European capitals were to back an American campaign. Britain said a dossier to be published by the Government would convince the public of the gravity of the Iraqi threat. Mike O'Brien, a Foreign Office minister, said on BBC radio that "as far as nuclear weapons are concerned we believe that [Saddam Hussein] is in the process of developing that capacity".

Speaking to the European Parliament, Chris Patten, the EU's external relations commissioner, argued that all countries must "respect the authority of the United Nations and of international law". He continued: "The Security Council has charted the way forward in dealing with this intensely difficult problem and, in my judgement, every nation should act within the framework of the decisions and resolutions issued by the UN."

During talks last weekend at Elsinore in Denmark all 15 EU member states agreed that President Saddam was a threat to regional stability and that the onus was on the Iraqi President to prove he did not have weapons of mass destruction by readmitting UN weapons inspectors.

But there was also agreement that the desire to change regime was not enough to justify an attack, and that the UN track must be pursued, while not ruling out any options in the long run. One EU diplomat described the European position as "more coherent than the American one".

Although the German government has made clear it will not participate in an Iraqi conflict, there is growing confidence that, once elections are out of the way, Berlin will fall into line behind US military action, provided it is sanctioned by the United Nations.

After meeting Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Prime Minister of Denmark, which holds the EU presidency, said that while there was "no doubt" that President Saddam was dangerous it was "vitally important to pursue the UN track".

The EU's foreign policy high representative, Javier Solana, told the Berliner Zeitung that the UN alone should decide whether to threaten Iraq with military action. America would be making "a big mistake" if it attacked Iraq without support from its allies, Mr Solana said.

An opinion poll of 6,001 people in six European countries, conducted in June and published yesterday, found 60 per cent approval for a military strike on Iraq if it had UN backing. The poll was commissioned by the German Marshall Fund of the United States and the Chicago Council of Foreign Relations.