The United States has said there are "problems" with Iraq's arms declaration and has warned the country would not get a second chance to reveal its weapons capabilities.
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US Secretary of State Colin Powell
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The United States will give its verdict later this week but is ready for war if it believes Iraq has broken a tough UN Security Council resolution aimed at ensuring it has no weapons of mass destruction.
The price of gold jumped to its highest level in more than 5 1/2 years, oil prices surged and the dollar slid to a three-year low against the euro, as fears grew the US and Britain would go to war against Iraq.
Iraq handed documents to the United Nations on December 7th, and US experts have been examining them to find possible discrepancies between the Iraqi version and information Washington has from its own intelligence sources.
UN inspectors continued their inspections of Iraqi sites today, but to date they have found no evidence Saddam Hussein's regime is harbouring weapons of mass destruction.
But US Secretary of State Colin Powell told a news conference yesterday evening: "We said at the very beginning that we approached it with scepticism and the information I have received so far is that that scepticism is well founded".
"There are problems with the declaration".
Mr Powell did not elaborate, and it was not clear what steps Washington would take after delivering its verdict.
The White House underlined that Iraq would not get a second chance to fill gaps in its declaration. Iraq denies having weapons of mass destruction.
"I think it was abundantly plain from the will of the United Nations - this was Iraq's last chance to inform the world in an accurate, complete and full way what weapons of mass destruction they possessed," said White House spokesman Mr Ari Fleischer. "That was plain to all going into this one, last, final-chance process".
Britain today said it would be issuing a formal response to the Iraqi declaration after Christmas.