Referring to war against Iraq, Blair said; "I'm afraid it's inevitable though…"

LONDON, December 20 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – British Premier Tony Blair Friday, December 20, delivered a direct message to British forces to be prepared for action against Iraq, as the U.S. insisted that it will keep sharing intelligence with UN weapons inspectors in Iraq.

According to British daily The Guardian, Blair told the British Forces Broadcasting Service that the government was making all the necessary preparations should a strike against Iraq become inevitable.

Blair said he apologized for the uncertainty facing those now being mobilized: "I'm sorry about the uncertainty. I'm afraid it's inevitable though, because at the moment we simply don't know whether Iraq will be found in breach of the United Nations resolution.

"And if it is, and if we discover they have been refusing to cooperate properly with the UN inspectors, then we have always made clear that we will go back to the security council, that we will be prepared to use force in order to ensure they are disarmed of all chemical, biological or potentially nuclear weapons."

The UN inspectors started their mission in Iraq November 25, and are still carrying out their work, in line with resolution 1441. They have praised the full and complete cooperation of the Iraqi authorities.

However, Blair went on: "The key thing at the moment is to make all the preparations necessary, and to make sure that we are building up the capacity in the region - both the Americans and ourselves - and that we are able to undertake this mission if it falls to us to do so.

"At the moment, we simply don't know whether the inspectors will find the breach or not and we have got to be very, very clear, however, that the only circumstances in which Iraq will cooperate properly is if whatever UN resolution we have is backed up by the potential use of force."

Blix Criticism of U.S. Spurned

Meanwhile, the United States insisted Friday, December 20, that it will keep sharing intelligence with UN weapons inspectors in Iraq, refusing, however, provide secrets that risk "drying up" its sources for future data.

"It is entirely in the interest of the United States, of this government, to give the inspectors the tools they need to do their job," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The defense came after chief UN inspector Hans Blix complained that London and Washington are not providing enough intelligence about sites where they claim Baghdad is hiding weapons of mass destruction.

"We want to help the inspectors to have all the evidence they need," said Fleischer, but "we never want to do anything that could lead to drying up of sources and methods."

"The most important thing that governments like the U.S. or the UK could give us would be to tell us the sites where they are convinced that they keep some weapons of mass destruction. This is what we want to have," Blix said in an interview with the BBC.

The United States and Britain, the two countries pushing most strongly for a war in Iraq, claim Baghdad is in "material breach" of the latest UN disarmament resolution - a term widely interpreted as a possible pretext for war.

Asked in the BBC interview Friday, about what access his inspectors had been given by U.S. and British intelligence, he said: "Not very much, not yet. I hope we will and now that we are in full operation, I hope it will come."

"They have the methods to listen to telephone conversations, they have spies, satellites, etc. So they have a lot of sources which we don't have."

"Whether or not there's room for the United States and the inspectors, working collaboratively, to have differing interpretations about the exact volume of information is of course a topic that can come up from time to time," said Fleischer.

The spokesman said the United States would work to achieve a balance "agreeable to both sides."