BRITAIN: A British Labour MP, Mr George Galloway, insisted yesterday he had secured a promise from President Saddam Hussein of Iraq that could avert a Middle East war.
He said that President Saddam had agreed to accept United Nations weapons inspectors back into Iraq and to allow them unfettered access to potential weapons sites round the country.
This is the concession that the UN, supported by the US and Britain, has been pressing Iraq to make for more than three years.
The US fears that President Saddam has been using the absence of the inspectors to develop weapons of mass destruction and is threatening to take military action to depose him.
Mr Galloway, who interviewed the Iraqi dictator in a bunker at a secret location in or around the capital, Baghdad, last Thursday, said the offer removed the casus belli.
But the Foreign Office yesterday played down the significance of the offer.
A spokesman said: "This interview changes nothing. It tells us nothing new. Saddam knows what he has to do and that is comply with UN security council resolutions."
These resolutions demand that the inspectors have unhindered access to check for weapons of mass destruction.
The Foreign Office privately sees President Saddam's promise to Mr Galloway as a diversionary tactic.
But Mr Galloway challenged the US, the UN and Britain to explore the offer. "The Foreign Office is defending an increasingly discredited line. Why not test the sincerity of the offer?" he said. "There is nothing to lose and everything to gain."
Mr Galloway has good access to the Iraqi leadership because of his prominence in a campaign against sanctions during most of the last decade.
Mr Galloway said: "Saddam said that he would accept all the UN resolutions and these resolutions include unfettered access."
Asked if President Saddam had used the word "unfettered", Mr Galloway said: "He did not explicitly say that, but by accepting the resolutions you are accepting these words."
AFP adds: Saudi Arabia has said it will not allow US forces to use its territory to attack Iraq, the Saudi Foreign Minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, said in a US television interview yesterday.
"Under the present circumstances, ... and with no proof that there is a threat imminent from Iraq, I don't think Saudi Arabia will join in," Prince Saud told ABC television.