LONDON, February 22 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – In their incessant bid to declare Iraq to be in material breach of U.N. demands, the U.S. and Britain are expected to submit a fresh draft resolution to the Security Council on Monday, February 24, a British leading newspaper reported Saturday, February 22.

The move will be introduced the same day U.N. chief arms inspector Hans Blix presents a new report on Iraqi weapons inspections to the U.N. body, said The Independent.

U.S. President George W. Bush, in effect, hopes that Blix will come back with a list of tasks that Iraq has allegedly refused to carry out.

"Iraq has provided the United Nations with nothing. Private interviews with inspectors have dried up. Iraq has insisted on a 48-hour advance notification of the U-2 flights, making U-2 spy missions, designed to determine what is happening, predictable," the New York Times quoted White House Spokesman Ari Fleischer as claiming.

The British daily added that Bush would this weekend discuss the final draft at his ranch in Texas with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, adding that the U.S. would like to enlist Madrid as co-sponsor of a text making clear that Iraq has failed to exploit the so-called last chance.

Expecting that the U.S. and Britain to "force" a vote by mid-March, some U.S. diplomats said it was likely to declare that Iraq was in "further material breach" of Security Council resolution 1441, and that it should face "serious consequences."

The new resolution, however, will not contain either benchmarks or the British-asked explicit deadline for Iraq to disclose its weapons and start disarming, the New York Times quoted U.S. administration officials as saying.

Nevertheless, American officials acknowledged that Bush still faced an uphill battle to secure the required nine-vote majority on the 15-member council, and avoid a veto from France, Russia or China, the three permanent members who want the inspectors to be given more time.

But Bush has repeatedly stressed he would go ahead even without U.N. sanction, relying on a "coalition of the willing" to disarm Iraq.

Echoing Bush, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared that the Pentagon had "ample" forces ready to move against Iraq.

"We are at a point where if the President takes that decision, the Department of Defense is prepared and has the capability and the strategy to do that," he said.

On Friday, February 21, American and British officials also worked to settle their differences over the resolution's language while refining it to attract the support of other Council members.

Wooing Wavering Countries

Washington and London decided Friday, February 21, that their strategy in the U.N. would be to try to coax 9 of the 15 members of the Security Council into backing their new draft to challenge France, Russia or China to veto the will of the Council's majority, the New York Times said.

It takes nine votes to pass a resolution given that the United States and Britain have only Bulgaria and Spain on their side.

The resolution is automatically killed if any of the Security Council permanent members, the United States, Britain, Russia, France and China, uses its vote power.

Part of the discussion this week, U.S. diplomats said, concerned how to win over six wavering Council members, known informally as "the middle six", namely Angola, Guinea, Cameroon, Mexico, Chile and Pakistan.

They are nonpermanent members, along with Bulgaria, Germany, Spain and Syria.

The six countries "are really feeling the heat, and they're going to be feeling even more heat in coming days," said an administration official.

"On the other side, the French and Germans are turning up the pressure, too."

The strategy is to try to get Russia, France and China to acquiesce by abstaining, perhaps under pressure, if there is a base of 9 or 10 votes in favor.

But many in the Bush administration concede that this would be extremely difficult.

Some officials involved in the discussions, however, argued that a resolution approved by a divided Security Council with those nations holding veto power abstaining would be viewed by the world as so weak that it might be preferable to go to war without any resolution at all.

British Ambassador to the U.N. Sir Jeremy Greenstock was due to meet with all 10 nonpermanent members of the Security Council on Friday.

Sir Jeremy has told his colleagues that the Council was entering its "endgame" phase, said one diplomat with whom Sir Jeremy had spoken.

Nevertheless, the diplomat noted that it would be difficult to pressure the wavering nations into supporting the U.S.-U.K. stance on Iraq.