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U.N. showdown on Iraq delayed
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President Bush and the leaders of Britain and Spain are weighing a weekend summit to hammer out their Iraq strategy amid hardening opposition on the U.N. Security Council, officials said Friday. Senior U.S. officials told the Associated Press that a decision on the meeting, to be held in a neutral country, was awaiting word from the two partners and the host country while British officials said Prime Minister Tony Blair was poised to travel, but that nothing has been finalized at this point.

THE FRANTIC diplomatic activity highlights the uncertain fate of the U.N. resolution proposed by the three countries that would pave the way for war against Iraq.
France has threatened to veto any resolution that would set ultimatums for President Saddam Hussein while a top Russian official on Friday denounced a compromise proposal floated by Britain over the past few days.

Frustrated by the objections of the veto-wielding members of the Security Council -- and unsure of the prospects of even winning the necessary nine votes in the 15-member council -- U.S. officials have suggested they may abandon the U.N. route.

Bush has argued that Washington is justified in waging war to disarm Iraq based on the previous U.N. resolution that threatened "severe consequences" in the event of Iraqi non-cooperation. But in Britain where less than 20 percent of the population back war without U.N. authority, Blair is under intense pressure to pursue the second resolution.

Senior U.S. officials said the summit would be a diplomatic strategy session on the eve of a U.N. showdown.

Bush had given the go-ahead for the summit proposal but was awaiting word from his two partners and the host nation, the officials said on condition of anonymity Friday. A final decision was expected later in the day.

News of the meeting first surfaced Thursday morning, but officials said planning had stopped only to confirm hours later that talks had begun again amid tense discussions at the United Nations. Plans for Iraq after Saddam's ouster also would be on the agenda, one of the officials said.
WEEKEND DEADLINE?
The Bush administration, which had wanted to introduce a new resolution authorizing force in the Security Council on Friday, will continue "working hard to see if we can take this to a vote," Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday.

But he pointedly set a time frame that suggested the diplomatic effort would not extend beyond the weekend.

A senior administration official told The Associated Press the United States was waiting for Mexico and Chile to decide. In a constantly shifting lineup, the two Latin American countries could ensure the nine votes required for council approval -- provided there was no veto, which both France and Russia have said they would cast.

France's veto threat was being taken seriously, and the administration may decide not to give France the chance by withdrawing the resolution, the senior administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Bush was ready to drop the resolution, several aides said, if Blair didn't want it put to a vote.

This week Britain proffered a compromise, a series of tests or "benchmarks" to measure Iraq's sincerity about disarming. But France's immediate resistance infuriated U.S. and British officials while Iraq exulted it could end the political career of the British prime minister.

Bush and Blair obviously "have lost the round before it starts while we, along with well-intentioned powers in the world, have won it," the popular daily Babil, owned by Saddam Hussein's son, Odai, said in a front-page editorial.

DIPLOMATIC STALEMATE
"I fear a diplomatic solution is becoming terribly difficult," Britain's minister for Europe, Denis MacShane, told French radio on Friday.

President Jacques Chirac told Blair by phone on Friday that France was ready to work on finding ways to disarm Iraq, but continues to reject any talk of an ultimatum, a spokeswoman said.

She said France was ready to discuss proposals under which U.N. arms inspections could be halted before the end of a 120-day period which Paris has until now backed. The two leaders spoke by telephone.

In London, a spokesman for Blair said Chirac "insisted there were no circumstances that France would countenance a new resolution that authorized or implied military action."

Russia added to Britain's headaches when Deputy Foreign Minister Yuri Fedotov told Interfax news agency that Blair's proposed amendments were not constructive and would not avert war.
MISSED OPPORTUNITY?
Whatever the decision, the United States will declare that Iraq has missed its final opportunity to disarm, the senior U.S. official said.

On the verge of an embarrassing diplomatic defeat, the administration backpedaled from its statements that it was time for the 15 members of the council to stand up and be counted.

At a news conference last week, Bush said he was prepared for a vote, win or lose. "No matter what the whip count is, we're calling for the vote. We want to see people stand up and say what their opinion is about Saddam Hussein and the utility of the United Nations," the president said.

Aides said the president has pushed for a U.N. vote thus far out of respect for Blair, whose support of Bush has drawn severe criticism in Britain.

The Security Council vote wasn't Bush's only problem. The president sent a letter to incoming Turkish Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Vice President Dick Cheney called the leader in hopes of securing permission to invade Iraq through Turkey or to use Turkish airspace for an attack.

However, senior administration officials told The New York Times that Turkey dismissed the latest appeals. One official familiar with the conversation between Cheney and Erdogan said "the message was clear that by the time Turkey got its act together, it would be too late to do us any good."

Within hours, Navy ships armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles were told to move out of the Mediterranean and into the Red Sea. There are more than 225,000 U.S. troops in the region.

OTHER DEVELOPMENTS

A prominent Muslim cleric urged Iraqis around the world Friday to threaten U.S. interests and "set them ablaze" as Baghdad pressed its verbal assault against American efforts to win U.N. authorization for war. "The entire world, Muslims and non-Muslims, is cursing the aggressive intentions of the American administration against Iraq which, God willing, will be frustrated," Abdel-Razzaq al-Saadi, the imam of Umm al-Maarek, or Mother of All Battles mosque, said in his sermon during Friday prayers.

The United Nations pulled eight armored personnel carriers and their Bangladeshi crews out of the U.N.-monitored demilitarized zone on the Iraq-Kuwaiti border, part of an announced partial withdrawal of observers as tensions build. The withdrawal leaves crews in 22 vehicles still manning U.N.-authorized gates through the electrified fence and patrolling the fence line, erected after the 1991 Gulf War.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri rebuffed a high-level Arab League peace mission that had been scheduled to travel to Baghdad this week. He said top Iraqi officials wouldn't have time to meet with the dignitaries, who included the foreign ministers of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Tunisia and Bahrain and the secretary-general of the Arab League, Amr Moussa.

NBC's Bob Kur and Campbell Brown at the White House, Andrea Mitchell at the United Nations,

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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