Baghdad warns US threats block diplomatic solution

Swell of world opinion grows against America 'warmongering'

As international opposition to a US attack on Iraq grew even louder, Baghdad insisted yesterday a diplomatic solution could still be found to the dispute, but that attempts to find one were being thwarted by American warmongering.

Responding to the latest threats from hardliners in the Bush administration, Iraq's vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan claimed that dialogue had not been completely cut off, but that "it is being blocked by American pressure".

The vice-President is on a three-day visit to Syria, part of Iraq's campaign among its neighbours to shore up opposition to a US attack on a fellow Arab nation. As he spoke, more criticism of Washington's increasingly evident plans for war were voiced around the world, with China, India and Turkey – the last a major regional staging point for any assault – adding their objections to the chorus of dissent.

Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, also urged the US to show restraint, calling for dialogue and making clear an invasion was not the policy of the world body. "The UN is not agitating for military action," Mr Annan told a news conference in Johannesburg where he is at the UN development summit.

In Germany, the conservative opposition leader Edmund Stoiber joined Chancellor Gerhard Schröder in opposing a pre-emptive strike by Washington without the blessing of the UN, ensuring a joint anti-war front in a key European ally of the US, whoever wins next month's Bundestag elections.

But the hostility abroad is cutting little ice among President George Bush's senior advisers. After vice-President Dick Cheney urged quick action to get rid President Saddam without allowing him to play for time by haggling over the return of UN weapon inspectors, the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld has weighed in with a blunt warning that the US was perfectly prepared to go it alone, if necessary.

Likening Saddam Hussein to Hitler, Mr Rumsfeld said President Bush, with insistence that the world must be rid of the Iraqi dictator, was playing the role of Winston Churchill played in the Thirties. "It wasn't until each country [in Europe] got attacked that they said, 'Maybe Winston Churchill was right. Maybe that lone voice expressing concern about what was happening was right'," he added.

Ignoring that not a single country apart from Britain (with qualifications) and Israel supports the removal by force of President Saddam, Mr Rumsfeld said the doubters would be persuaded of the rightness of the American cause. "It is less important to have unanimity than it is to be making the right decisions and doing the right thing."

Every sign is that the Cheney/Rumsfeld camp is closest to Mr Bush's thinking. Tuesday's meeting between the President and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi Arabia's influential ambassador in Washington, does not seem to have softened Riyadh's hostility to an attack, shared throughout a tremulous Arab world.

After President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, another traditional US ally in the region, warned of chaos throughout the Middle East in the event of an attack, Bahrain's King, Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, yesterday said his country, too, opposed military action against Iraq. His stance is significant, since the tiny Gulf state is the US Navy base for the Gulf and has facilities which could substitute for US bases in Saudi Arabia. Qatar is against an attack and probably could not be used as a regional launch pad.

In Damascus, vice-President Ramadan said: "We do not consider the American threats a joke, nor do we regard them fatalistically ... Anything is possible ... We believe in the right of any people to defend themselves." America, he said, "has an idea, an image and a programme which it wants to impose on the whole world without exception and according to its own method".

He added: "There are rights and obligations. If flexibility is to be understood as concessions, this is not going to happen." An attack on Iraq would be an attack on the entire Arab nation, the vice-President said.

His Syrian hosts have described the plans to hit Iraq as part of an American attempt to install puppet regimes in the region to serve US and Israeli interests.