The sense of a rapidly developing endgame over Iraq gripped Westminster last night as an uncompromising Mr Tony Blair insisted UN Resolution 1441 provides the legal basis for war.
The Prime Minister assured MPs he was continuing to work "flat out" to secure majority backing for a second resolution in the imminent Security Council vote. However, as co-sponsor Spain suggested the draft resolution might actually be withdrawn, Downing Street and the Foreign Office were turning their fire on President Chirac's threat to use the French veto in all circumstances.
Pressed to say that the second resolution would be pushed to a vote, the Foreign Secretary, Mr Jack Straw, told journalists: "Let us see whether we get there."
While he remained hopeful of winning the second resolution, Mr Straw said he had assumed last November that the 15 backers for Resolution 1441 had intended to see it implemented, adding that the threatened French veto "whatever the circumstances" was "a circumstance we have to take into account".
Likewise Downing Street sources - who just 24 hours earlier had professed increased confidence that the second resolution would carry, and possibly change the dynamics inside the Security Council and see the French and/ or Russian veto threats withdrawn - were last night refusing to predict the final outcome.
One prime ministerial aide said the six "wavering" countries on the Security Council "could hardly be blamed for asking 'what's the point?' when Chirac says he will use the veto, even where Saddam is still not fully complying." And that sense of a fast-approaching endgame was reinforced when Mr Straw said the diplomatic process was coming to a conclusion.
In the Commons Mr Blair repeated that the United States had been persuaded to follow the UN route on the understanding that, should Saddam fail to comply with the UN's disarmament demands, "serious consequences" would follow.
Asserting it would be "a tragedy for the UN" if they did not, Mr Blair said he remained determined that "the unified will" expressed in Resolution 1441 must be implemented. Mr Blair left MPs in no doubt that, while a second resolution was desirable as a demonstration of continued international unity, he was satisfied the existing resolution "gives the legal basis for this" proposed military action.
Challenged by Liberal Democrat leader, Mr Charles Kennedy, to say if Mr Kofi Annan had been wrong in warning that military action could be illegal without explicit UN sanction, Mr Blair suggested the UN Secretary General had rather been stressing the need for the UN coming together.
And, insisting they could not have a situation where France said she would veto in any circumstances, Mr Blair suggested the search for agreement on a second resolution had been "complicated" by the French position.
As the British Ambassador to the UN circulated the six "tests" by which Iraqi compliance might be judged, Mr Blair said it was essential to send "the strongest possible signal to Saddam that he has now to disarm or face the consequences."
Mr Blair's uncompromising performance caused dismay among Labour anti-war rebels, who had suggested he seize the "escape clause" offered by US Defence Secretary Mr Donald Rumsfeld's assertion that the US could proceed without Britain. Mr Graham Allen MP told the BBC: "I feel depressed and deflated to think there was a chance that we could have avoided war next week. It was a very clear chance. That has been passed-up today so we are back on George W Bush's timetable for war next week."
Mr Blair also left International Development Secretary Ms Clare Short out-to-dry, resisting criticism from Tory leader Mr Iain Duncan Smith, telling him it was better that they "discuss the substance" of the issues at this point.
The six UK conditions
Saddam must:
o Make a public statement, to be broadcast in Iraq and outside, admitting he has weapons of mass destruction and will give them up
o Allow 30 Iraqi scientists to be interviewed outside Iraq with their families in tow
o Surrender stocks of anthrax and other biological and chemical agents which U.N. weapons inspectors said Iraq had in 1998, or produce documents to demonstrate what happened to them
o Pledge to destroy banned missiles
o Account for unmanned aerial vehicles, known as "drones", which can spray chemical agents over wide areas
o Give a commitment to give up all mobile bio-production laboratories for destruction.