Saying the United Nations had debated long enough over a new resolution to demandIraqi disarmament, a White House spokesman said today the time had come to vote.
"The time has come for people to raise their hands and cast their vote," spokesman Mr Ari Fleischer told reporters aboard Air Force One as US President George W. Bush traveled to New Mexico.
"It is coming down to the wire. This is important. The United Nations has debated this now long enough," he said.
Earlier, Iraq said a draft resolution at the United Nations to disarm Iraq is an attempt by the United States "to colonise Iraq".
"The American-proposed draft is, in a few words, a declaration to colonise Iraq in the name of the United Nations," the foreign minister, Mr Naji Sabri, told the Algerian television station KTV in Baghdad last night.
The proposed resolution "tries to deal with the people of Iraq as a nation under the mandate of a colonial power," he said.
The United States, supported by Britain, submitted a draft resolution last week that would give UN arms inspectors far-reaching rights to search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which has the second largest oil reserves in the world behind Saudi Arabia.
Mr Sabri said the draft "calls for dealing with Iraq as an occupied territory, as a country with no government, with no sovereignty."
This would violate the basic principles of the UN Charter and Security Council resolutions about Iraq, he said.
"It is in fact an insult to the United Nations, an insult to the international community, and it can be described as a war, or a declaration of war, not only on Iraq but also on the United Nations," Mr Sabri added.
US President Bush has upped pressure on the United Nations to disarm Iraq, but France has urged the United States to compromise on inspections to win the world body's support.
France and Russia - which in addition to the United States, Britain and China hold vetoes as permanent Security Council members - object to language in the US draft that they believe Washington could use to justify an attack on Iraq. They have each submitted a rival draft resolution.