Talks on a US-backed proposal to end weapons inspections and disarm Iraq by force ground to a standstill yesterday, as the United States, Britain and Spain called an emergency summit in the Azores.
"The deadlock is only getting worse and I am not sure that anything at all is possible in the near run," council president Mamady Traore of Guinea said.
With the council unable to agree on the US-British-Spanish resolution, President George W. Bush was to meet Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Spanish counterpart Jose Maria Aznar on Portugal's mid-Atlanic archipelago tomorrow, officials said.
Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Manuel Durao Barroso, a vocal Bush supporter who will attend the meeting, said: "No declaration of war will come out of the Azores summit, I can assure you of that."
The summit aims to find a way to win a Security Council vote next week to pave the way for war, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.
"The president does think it's important to go the last mile for diplomacy," Fleischer said of the day-long trip. "And if it's important to our friends and our allies, it's important to President Bush."
At least one B-1 bomber struck Iraqi radars in western Iraq yesterday, the first time a long-range bomber has been used in a combat mission to enforce the no-fly zones over Iraq, US defense officials said.
The use of a heavy bomber for a routine mission normally conducted by fighter jets was another sign that US forces are stepping up the pressure on Baghdad.
AFP