France and Russia have withheld immediate public backing for a US compromise on using the threat of war against Iraq, but a month-long deadlock at the United Nations seems closer to resolution.
France, which like Russia is among the five veto-wielding powers in the UN Security Council, has signalled it favours a modified US draft resolution removing explicit authorisation of force to make Iraq disarm.
But it has not yet given open support, diplomats said today.
French President Jacques Chirac, whose country led opposition to an earlier, more toughly worded US draft, insisted again today that the military option had to be a last resort and warned against "temptations of adventure".
"In the modern world, the use of force should only be a last resort," he told a summit of French-speaking nations in Beirut.
Diplomats said negotiations between Paris and Washington were continuing on how best to deal with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and what Washington says are his weapons of mass destruction.
Russia was said to be considering trying to add some proposals of its own at the UN debate on Iraq, and Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov stressed that the priority was for UN weapons inspectors to return to Iraq after a four-year break.
Among the five veto-holding Security Council members - United States, Russia, France, Britain and China - the United States and Britain had been in intense negotiations with the others to win backing for a tough new resolution on Iraq that would automatically trigger an attack if Baghdad failed to disarm.
But France and Russia resisted and China also expressed scepticism, leading Washington to modify its draft resolution.