Straw rebuffed in bid to salvage resolution

Jack Straw met a wall of scepticism at the UN last night after dashing to New York in an attempt to salvage a proposed Anglo-American resolution authorising war with Iraq.

The Foreign Secretary was due to propose to six undecided countries on the UN Security Council that once the text was approved, Iraq would be given a short additional window of time – perhaps just 72 hours – to do an about-turn and surrender all its weapons.

The chief UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, returns to the deeply divided Security Council today with a report which could decide whether war is declared. But he is not likely to help the Anglo-American stance by noting that Iraq has been co-operating a "great deal more" in recent days, for example, by destroying its al-Samoud missiles and offering new information on its arms.

Sources at the Security Council were quick to dismiss the latest British idea as only a "cosmetic" change. Mexico and Chile, both waverers, were said to be unimpressed. British diplomats hope that injecting a last opportunity for Baghdad will shift the responsibility for what happens next from the UN on to Iraq itself.

Mr Straw embarked last night on a round of fretful talks both with the partners on the resolution – Spain and the US – and with the so-called "Middle Six" of undecided Security Council member states.

He said Britain was serious about a compromise and denied that it represented a cosmetic change. "There is nothing whatever 'cosmetic' about what we are proposing. We do not want military action, let us be quite clear about this, we want to strain every nerve to avoid military action," Mr Straw said.

The sense of drama was further heightened as President George Bush was preparing to hold a rare White House press conference to consider the crisis with Iraq. Officials said he would also seek to highlight the war on terrorism and the recent arrest in Pakistan of Osama bin Laden's alleged deputy in al-Qa'ida.

The fate of the Anglo-American resolution still looked highly precarious. The British initiative does not address the more serious challenge, however, of averting vetoes from one or several of the other permanent members of the Security Council. China aligned itself yesterday firmly with France and Russia, which earlier this week threatened to use their veto.

In London, Tony Blair suggested he would be prepared to wage war on Iraq even if a number of UN Security Council powers used their vetoes. Just last month, the Prime Minister said he reserved the right to go to war without UN authorisation only when an "unreasonable veto" was wielded by a single country.

But in a debate on MTV, the music television channel, he hardened that proviso to include multiple vetoes. When asked under what circumstances he would go to war without a fresh UN mandate, he replied: "If there were a veto applied by one of the countries with a veto or by countries that I thought were applying the veto unreasonably, then in those circumstances I would."

Although China stopped short of threatening a veto itself, it made clear that its sympathies lay with Moscow and Paris. The Chinese leader, Jiang Zemin, offered his support in a telephone call to the French President, Jacques Chirac. "The Chinese side still supports using political means to resolve the Iraq issue. The door of peace should not be closed," the state news agency quoted him as saying. Earlier yesterday, the Chinese Foreign Minister, Tang Jiaxuan, asserted that "China endorses and supports the contents" of the Franco-German position.

He said resolution 1441, which was passed in November and set up the current, tougher weapons inspection regime in Iraq, was working. "The tasks spelt out by that resolution are not completed yet," Mr Tang said at a news conference.

"We are still working hard for a political solution and trying to avoid war ... At this moment, it is completely unnecessary to put aside resolution 1441 and introduce a new resolution."

Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, said he was still hoping that war could be averted and a compromise found in the Security Council. "I am encouraging people to strive for a compromise, to seek a common ground and to make concessions," he told reporters.