The UN route is still the best way forward to retain unity over Saddam

For an organisation so weirdly put together, the UN Security Council still remains an astonishingly benign global brand

In the run-up to the 1992 US Presidential election, the right-wing Republican hopeful Pat Buchanan had his people issue a bumper sticker which sought to taunt George Bush I for both the state of the economy and the failure of US troops to go all the way to Baghdad at the end of the Gulf War. "Saddam Hussein's still got a job," it said. "Have you?" It is looking increasingly as if no one will be able to use that slogan against George Bush II. Nothing is definite. But Tony Blair's declaration yesterday that war is still avoidable, while true, cannot disguise the fact that it looks more rather than less probable than it did even a few weeks ago.

The fact that yesterday's meeting of exiled Iraqi dissidents was able to agree, however bland the terminology, a democratic foundation for a post-Saddam Iraq may not tell us much about what would happen. But it modestly increases the momentum for regime change. Even more significant is the 12,000-page declaration from Baghdad which, by all accounts, does nothing to acknowledge the presence of any of the mass destruction weaponry the US and the British insist he has. You don't have to believe all the propaganda seeping out of the system in London and Washington to assume that it is largely the rehash of old documentation officials say it is.

Certainly there are doubts – not least in parts of Whitehall itself – about whether the authorised leaks are helpful ahead of the meeting on Thursday at which Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, is due to give his own assessment of the declaration. But those Security Council permanent members, notably France and Russia, which have the full text and are also most reluctant to see a war in Iraq, would surely say so on Thursday if they unearthed evidence to the contrary in the document. In which case the semi-public briefings by US and British officials would contrive to look sinister as well as silly. As Downing Street and the White House are presumably smart enough to realise.

So let's give this assessment the benefit of the doubt for the time being. So Saddam has passed up the chance to show a change of heart and suddenly "discover" – say – that some old chemical weapons facilities had been dusted off and found to be in working order. Instead he has fulfilled the fears of several neighbouring Arab regimes by deciding that weapons of mass destruction are actually crucial to his power. What next?

One element of the long and tortuous negotiations in New York in the run-up to Resolution 1441, in which Colin Powell and Jack Straw were particularly active, was to insert a crucial little three word conjunction to the definition of a "material breach". This means – or should mean – that to be in breach Saddam has to issue a false declaration and refuse to comply with the UN Weapons Inspectors. Which is why Mr Blix's team should, and probably will, be allowed to continue their work, possibly up to the deadline of 27 January. If the Blix team were to be refused access to a specific scientist, or if Baghdad closed off sites which the UN inspectors, perhaps armed with hard US or British intelligence, asked to see, that would be a clear breach. But that hasn't happened yet.

This is more than a legalistic point, particularly in Britain. For public opinion here would be greatly strengthened in favour of war if clear evidence were found to contradict Saddam's denials. US officials are deeply sceptical about the inspection process, not so much because of any deficiency of Dr Blix, who, having been duped before, shows every sign of real determination, but because they believe the teams' trips, especially the longer ones, are continually compromised by the Iraqis' ability to discover the destination before they arrive. But that doesn't alter the fact that either a hit by, or a patent concealment from, the inspectors would go a long way to overcome deep doubts about the war.

It's perfectly true that discovery isn't the only way of providing evidence. As Mr Straw has been at pains to stress, Resolution 1441 obliges Saddam to account for a large amount biological and chemical weapon material left unaccounted for in 1998. According to the only accounts available, the Saddam declaration conspicuously doesn't do that. And maybe the publication of satellite pictures would be enough to demonstrate that there is a breach. But European public opinion could do with more. This isn't so much an issue in the US, where public opinion, transformed by 11 September, is conditioned for war. But in general it's an offshoot of voter cynicism (and this has long been true way beyond Britain) that something isn't believed just because the Government says it's true.

All these problems would be greatly eased if there were to be a further UN resolution sanctioning war. This would go some way to dispel doubts in almost any circumstances. And here the game may not yet be over. It's all very well saying that Kosovo was an example of international action without the UN. But two factors obtained there which do not in the present case. One was that the Russians were known to be refusing support because of their historic links with the Serbs. But the other, much more potent, was the nightly evidence on television screens of what Milosevic was doing to the Kosovo Albanians.

Might Russia might be persuaded to back a second resolution on Iraq? Given the leeway, much of it indefensible, which has been given to Vladimir Putin over Chechnya, he certainly owes the US and Britain a lot. And maybe the US would have to share more of its intelligence with the French than it would care to in normal times. But would the French really hold out if other European Nato countries, Denmark, Spain, Italy and Turkey among them, backed action?

There are tentative signs that even Washington regards the alleged emptiness of Saddam's response to 1441 as making it worthwhile to try for a second resolution. This should be encouraged, though it will require a patience in rather short supply in Washington. War may well now happen with or without it. But for an organisation so weirdly put together, the UN Security Council remains an astonishingly benign global brand. Without its endorsement war is going to be much more politically difficult, not least in Britain and for the British Prime Minister.

Mr Blair has renewed his attempts to internationalise the conflict, first by meeting Syria's Bashar al-Assad yesterday, and secondly, and as importantly, by convening a London conference on Palestinian reform. Of course this is a most modest step. Reform, even if achieved, can't secure full democracy for the Palestinians when the nature of the occupation makes normal elections physically impossible. But it is at least an engagement, and one which calls the bluff of those hawks in Washington who have been using the absence of reform as a mere excuse for abandoning the Middle East peace process. In the same spirit, he should use all his influence to keep Washington on the UN route – whether or not it leads, in the end, to Baghdad.

d.macintyre@independent.co.uk