Bush warns Iraq after parliament rejects UN resolution

Vote greeted with derision by US President

The shadow-boxing between America and Iraq continued yesterday when the parliament in Baghdad recommended rejecting the United Nations resolution on weapons inspections and President George Bush said such a decision would lead to war.

The rubber-stamp 250-seat Iraqi parliament, whose membership must pledge loyalty to President Saddam, voted unanimously to reject the resolution that calls for Iraq to give unfettered access for inspectors or face "serious consequences".

At the same time it said that the Iraqi President should have the last word. Iraq's "political leadership should adopt what it considers appropriate to defend the Iraqi people and Iraq's independence and dignity and authorises President Saddam Hussein to adopt what he sees as appropriate, expressing our full support for his wise leadership", the parliament said.

The parliament's speaker, Saadoun Hammadi, described the vote as "a message to the United States that the people of Iraq are united behind their leadership, and it also shows that the people of Iraq know that in the UN resolution ... there are major allegations which are baseless".

Mr Bush scoffed at the remarks. "If Saddam Hussein does not comply to the detail of the resolution, we will lead a coalition to disarm him," he said. A spokesman dismissed the vote as "pure political theatre" and added: "There's nothing in this resolution that is negotiable."

Mr Bush was apparently referring to a proposal from President Saddam's elder son, Uday, suggesting that the resolution ought to be accepted if the UN agreed to include Arabs on the weapons inspection team – a proposal raised this week at a meeting of the Arab League.

Uday – who runs an influential newspaper and a television station – made his proposal in a letter to the parliament, of which he is a member but rarely attends. He said the resolution should be approved only if it had the backing of the Arab states.

Although Iraq is not allowed to dictate the make-up of the inspection teams, Jacques Baute, the chief UN nuclear inspector, said in Vienna that Arabs would be included in the teams being drawn up for the weapons search. "We will have some Arab speakers of various nationalities," he said, adding that the teams had to be able to communicate with the Iraqis.

In his letter, Uday wrote: "We also have to take precautions and measures and here we have to ask the Arab countries to immediately cut oil supplies to those countries that launch a military strike or aggression on Iraq and to any country that allows foreign war planes to use their airports or offer logistic support for them for refuelling.

"What is required from us as a national assembly is to take clear decisions. We should, as a national assembly, accept the UN resolution. This does not necessarily mean that we're surrendering to America because for us our conflict with America will continue for the next 20 years due to our ideological, religious and fundamental differences with them."

Uday was considered the main candidate to succeed his father as leader of Iraq until he was badly wounded in a 1996 assassination attempt. He appears to have been outstripped in the leadership stakes by his brother Qusay, who runs the Iraqi security apparatus and the élite Republican Guard.

Iraq has until Friday to accept the UN resolution or face "serious consequences".

In a notable hardening of the French position, the French Foreign Minister, Dominique de Villepin, warned yesterday that force would be used against President Saddam if he did not co-operate. During the drafting UN resolution 1441, adopted last Friday, France and Russia had opposed making the recourse to force automatic.

A Russian deputy foreign minister, Yuri Fedotov, called on Baghdad "to exercise self-control and pragmatism" by accepting the resolution. He said: "[The resolution] offers the possibility of avoiding the development of a situation of force around Iraq and resuming UN inspection activity in accordance with existing resolutions."

* US officials believe Iraq has been purchasing large quantities of a drug that could be used as an antidote to the effects of nerve gas, raising concern that Baghdad will deploy chemical weapons in the event of war.The New York Times says most of the contracts have been placed with suppliers in Turkey, which has come under pressure from Washington to end to the sales. Iraq has been able to buy the drug, atropine, under the system of so-called smart sanctions adopted by the UN, because it is used in hospitals to revive heart attack patients. But for cardiac patients it is administered by intravenous drip and Iraq has also been buying large quantities of auto-injector kits.