Iraq has asked the United Nations to freeze arms inspections at sensitive "presidential sites", a move which was immediately condemned by the chief UN weapons inspector as "flying in the face" of Security Council demands.
The UN Special Commission chief, Mr Richard Butler, who spent two days in Baghdad trying to persuade Iraq to comply with UN calls for unrestricted access for the inspectors, said yesterday the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Tariq Aziz, told him he would not discuss the issue before April.
Mr Butler told a news conference that Mr Aziz had informed him Iraq wanted to wait for weapons experts, meeting in Baghdad next month, to evaluate its efforts before it was ready to address the question of access.
Mr Butler, who said he telephoned the UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, and the Security Council president on Tuesday night, said he told Mr Aziz he "cannot and will not" agree to the request.
Britain's Foreign Secretary, Mr Robin Cook, said his country rejected Iraq's call for a freeze and did not rule out military options to make President Saddam Hussein comply with UN demands.
"With every passing day Saddam Hussein continues to expand his arsenal of biological and chemical weapons," Mr Cook said. "Every week Saddam is creating enough anthrax to fill two missile warheads."
The United States has said it wants a diplomatic solution to Iraq's long-standing defiance over the weapons inspections, but has also increased its military presence in the Gulf.
Mr Butler said Mr Aziz asked him to wait for results of a series of planned "technical evaluation meetings" on Iraq's warheads, chemical and biological weapons. The first meetings start on February 1st but no date has been set for the biological talks.
"He went on to say that he assumes that those meetings will show that the various weapons files are ready for closure" and that the lifting of UN sanctions on Iraq, imposed for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, would be imminent, Mr Butler said.
Mr Butler, who left Iraq later for New York, is due to address the Security Council tomorrow.
The United States rejected as unacceptable the proposal by Iraq. "It appears Iraq has ignored the message of the Security Council and instead tried to impose new and unacceptable conditions on the UN operations," the State Department spokesman, Mr James Rubin, said.