Mr Scott Ritter, a former UN arms inspector who rejects US charges that Iraq is developing weapons of mass destruction, has arrived in Baghdad declaring that his mission is to try to stop any US-led war on Iraq.
Mr Ritter, who arrived in Baghdad late last night, is expected to address the Iraqi parliament today. He is also due to meet senior Iraqi government officials.
Mr Ritter said the trip was at his own initiative "...as an American citizen concerned about the direction that my country is taking, I think that's the reason why I'm here."
"I'm here to help set in motion a sequence of events that hopefully could prevent a war that doesn't need to be fought," he told CNN.
Mr Ritter, a former US Marine who resigned his UN post in 1998 and later accused Washington of using the inspections teams to spy on Iraq, said last month that Baghdad had been fundamentally disarmed after the 1991 Gulf war that drove Iraqi invasion troops out of Kuwait.
On leaving his UN job, Mr Ritter at the time accused the United Nations and the United States of not being tough enough on Iraq when it violated Security Council resolutions, but he subsequently became a vocal critic of US policy on Iraq.
"Their [Iraqi] weapons programmes have been eliminated," he told a gathering of opponents to any US strike on Iraq in Washington last month.
"Iraq poses no threat to any of its neighbours. It does not threaten its region. It does not threaten the United States. It does not threaten the world."
He has said Washington and the United Nations should reassess their positions and not insist on 100 per cent disarmament.
Arms experts left Iraq on the eve of a US-British bombing campaign in December, 1998. They have not been allowed in since.
Iraq says it has no more weapons of mass destruction and that the United Nations should lift sanctions imposed on Iraq for its invasion of Kuwait.
******************
US Secretary of State Colin Powell says it could take Saddam Hussein as long as nine years to develop nuclear weapon capability.
Mr Powell believes Iraq's army is in a far weaker state than it was when coalition forces last attacked 12 years ago.
Mr Powell told the BBC that George W Bush has not yet decided whether to take military action against Iraq.
He also admitted there are disagreements between the President's advisors over what to do about Iraq.
But he said the Bush administration is united in the belief that Iraq is intent on developing its weapons of mass destruction.
He said: "After the Gulf War when we were able to get into Iraq with the inspectors... they were further along than we had thought. And so you can debate whether it is one year, five years or nine years - the important point is that they are still committed to pursuing that technology.
"And if they're committed to pursuing that technology, then obviously they're committed to trying to have a nuclear weapon".
Mr Powell underlined the importance of allowing weapons inspectors to re-enter Iraq, saying: "How much more they (Iraq) have done since 1998, what their inventories might be like now, this is what is not known and this is one of the reasons it would be useful to let the inspectors go in.
But Mr Powell said that Iraq is "much weaker" now than it was during the Gulf War 12 years ago.
"I would guesstimate that the Iraqi army is perhaps at one-third or a little better than one-third of its capability of 12 years ago," he said. "It is not the same force."