The Iraqi parliament is to reconvene today for a second day of discussions after a key official earlier recommended it should reject last Friday's UN resolution on disarmament.
The final decision, however, on the resolution passed unanimously by the UN Security Council will lie with the Revolutionary Command Council, Iraq's highest authority, which is led by President Saddam Hussein.
The parliamentary speaker, Mr Saadoun Hammadi, told reporters during a break in the assembly's proceedings that deputies would carry on debating the resolution today and would vote on a motion to reject the UN text and leave the final decision to Saddam.
He did not say if voting would take place the same day.
President Bush warned Baghdad the full might of the US military would be used if it did not comply with the resolution, which confers UN arms inspectors with sweeping new rights and gives Iraq just 30 days to submit a detailed list of its weapons.
Oil prices climbed yesterday on market fears that Iraq might reject the resolution. Traders bought futures heavily when the parliamentary committee recommended a rejection.
In Baghdad, Mr Salim al- Kubaisi, head of parliament's Arab and international relations committee, told the assembly: "The committee recommends the following: the rejection of the Security Council resolution 1441 and not to approve it in accordance with the opinion of our people who put confidence in their representatives.
"This UN resolution looks for a pretext [for war\] and not for a comprehensive solution. It seeks to create crises rather than co-operation and paves the way for aggression rather than for peace," he said.
Iraq has until Friday to allow UN arms experts unhindered access to any site suspected of producing chemical, biological or nuclear weapons or face "serious consequences".
In a front-page editorial, the ruling Baath party newspaper al-Thawra said the US and its ally Britain had inserted "vague, vicious and misleading texts that give them room for manoeuvre to use them as pretext to attack".
Nevertheless, the Arab League Secretary-General, Mr Amr Moussa, said yesterday he thought Iraq would "co-operate positively" with the resolution.
The US military said American and British warplanes bombed anti-aircraft missile sites on Sunday in the no-fly zone enforced by Washington and London in southern Iraq, the first such action since the resolution was passed. Iraq did not report any Western attack but said its anti-aircraft systems had fired at US and British warplanes over the south of the country on Saturday.
Arab foreign ministers have endorsed the UN resolution but also called on Security Council members to ensure it could not be used as an automatic trigger for war.
The chief UN weapons inspector, Mr Hans Blix, is due in Cyprus this week where his team will have a base before heading for Iraq, a Cyprus government source said. An advance team of about a dozen inspectors is expected to head for Baghdad on about November 25th to make spot inspections. Between 80 and 100 inspectors are due to resume their work in full by December 23rd.