Speaking at an Abrams tank factory, Bush acknowledged for the first time that Saddam Hussein may have destroyed his chemical and biological weapons before the invasion began. . . .

Bush said, "Iraqis with firsthand knowledge of these programs, including several top officials who have come forward recently -- some voluntarily, others not -- are beginning to cooperate, are beginning to let us know what the facts were on the ground."

His statement was based on documents and intelligence gained since the invasion began, said a White House official who spoke on condition he not be identified.

"Some things were destroyed in the '90s, some things were destroyed just before the war, some things were destroyed during the war and some things were moved," the official said. "They had a complex system for hiding things."

Newsweek reported recently that Hussein son-in-law Hussein Kamel told UN weapons inspectors in 1995 that most, if not all, biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them had been destroyed in the early to mid-1990s.

Officials inside government and advisers outside told ABCNEWS the administration emphasized the danger of Saddam's weapons to gain the legal justification for war from the United Nations and to stress the danger at home to Americans.

"We were not lying," said one official. "But it was just a matter of emphasis."

Officials now say they may not find hundreds of tons of mustard and nerve agents and maybe not thousands of liters of anthrax and other toxins. But U.S. forces will find some, they say. On Thursday, President Bush raised the possibility for the first time that any such Iraqi weapons were destroyed before or during the war. . . .

One official said that in the end, history and the American people will judge the United States not by whether U.S. officials find canisters of poison gas or vials of some biological agent.

History will judge the United States, the official said, by whether this war marked the beginning of the end for the terrorists who hate America.

The United States has regained the capability to make nuclear weapons for the first time in 14 years and has restarted production of plutonium parts for bombs, the Energy Department said Tuesday.

The announcement marks an important symbolic and operational milestone in rebuilding the nation's nuclear weapons complex, which began a long retrenchment in the late 1980s as the Cold War ended and the toll of environmental damage from bomb production became known. . . .

Under a Bush administration plan, the Energy Department is beginning limited production of plutonium parts for the stockpile of nuclear weapons and will begin laying plans for a new factory that could produce components for hundreds of weapons each year. . . .

"It is a sign that after a long period of decline, the weapons complex is back and growing," said Jon Wolfsthal, deputy director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former Energy Department weapons expert. "To the average U.S. citizen, it would be accurate to say we have restarted the production of nuclear weapons."

Energy Department officials vehemently denied that they are actually producing nuclear weapons and said they need the capability of producing plutonium parts to ensure the reliability of the stockpile of U.S. weapons, which is aging and may need new components. . . .

But critics question whether the Bush administration is going overboard in its investments in the nuclear weapons complex. Thomas Cochran, a scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the government is now spending about $6 billion annually on the nuclear weapons complex, 50% more than it did during the Cold War.

Iraq may have to leave the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries so it can pump out extra oil to pay for the country's reconstruction, says a former Iraqi oil minister who is now a key adviser to the American government.

The extra oil needed would be more than twice Iraq's pre-sanctions Opec quota and almost triple the present output of about 7 million barrels a day, said Fadhil Chalabi, who rejected a US invitation to become interim head of his country's oil sector.

Chalabi, who served on the US State Department's Future of Iraq Oil and Energy Working Group, says the Iraqi industry must be privatised to attract foreign investment following the war.

In the right hands the output of 7 million barrels a day is achievable in about six years. Such high production would, however, place a strain on Iraq's relations with Opec and threaten a slump in world oil prices.

Chalabi's preference would be for Iraq to stay in the cartel. However, he said: 'Iraq must maximise revenue from its oil. I would choose maximising the revenue through oil, with or without Opec.

'If it is within Opec it would be better, but it may not be possible.'

Chalabi, cousin of Ahmed Chalabi, the Pentagon's choice to head the country, said he would be prepared to serve the Iraqi oil industry if a democratically elected government was in place.

US forces said troops guarding a store of Iraqi ammunition near the Teachers' Houses had come under attack and that a device fired by the attackers caused an explosion, killing at least six Iraqi civilians.

'An unknown number of individuals attacked. One soldier was wounded. During the attack, the assailant fired an unknown incendiary device into the cache, causing it to catch fire and explode. The explosion caused the destruction of the cache as well as a nearby building,' US Central Command said. . . .

The deaths in the explosion prompted almost instant anti-American demonstrations. About 500 Iraqi men, chanting anti-American, pro-Islam slogans, drove out of the suburb - the first truck carrying six coffins, apparently containing bodies.

'No Americans or Saddam; Yes, yes to Islam!' the men chanted, some of them flying green Islamic flags and banners. Among the slogans were two in English: 'Stop explosions near civilians' and 'The terror after war'.

The blasts also sparked one angry demonstration in central Baghdad. Protesters carried banners reading 'No bombs between houses, yes, yes to freedom' and 'US forces kill innocents with Saddam's weapons in Zaafaraniya'. Yesterday, outside the Teachers' Houses survivors stood weeping by the site of the houses. Another, his eye bandaged, moved among the crowd stunned and almost incoherent with grief trying to find an explanation as to what had happened to his family. . . .

What has angered residents even more has been the attitude of US forces. In the hours after the missile fell, in pieces across this neighbourhood three Humvee personnel carriers turned up briefly for officers to photograph the damage and to take witness statements.

The visit lasted no longer than 15 minutes. When a sergeant, Tom Grasso, protested to his superior that he needed more time to talk to residents, he was ordered back into his car.

What the residents of the Teachers' Houses had been telling Grasso was this. US forces had been destroying Scud missiles almost daily. They told him that fragments had often fallen on their houses from a destruction site only 500m from their houses. They had feared that this might happen. And it did.

A fire that U.S. military officers blamed on an Iraqi guerrilla attack set off a chain of fierce explosions at a U.S.-controlled munitions dump today, sending rockets, missiles and other ordnance shrieking into residential neighborhoods in this southern Baghdad suburb. A number of civilians were killed or wounded, fanning anti-American sentiments that have been smoldering for days. . . .

Within hours of the explosions, hundreds of Iraqis took to the streets of Zafaraniyah and downtown Baghdad to protest the U.S. military occupation, chanting, "Americans go home." Some of the demonstrators waved placards that read, "Stop Explosions Near Civilians." Near the Palestine Hotel in central Baghdad, about 200 men prayed to protest the incident and, they said, to let Americans know they should leave the country immediately.

"If they hurt us, we will fight them," said one protester. "No soldier will be safe walking the streets of Baghdad from today on."

Scattered attacks on U.S. troops also were reported elsewhere in this California-size country. Although no casualties were reported, the attacks underscored opposition to the U.S. military presence among some segments of Iraq's 24 million people despite the overall joy exhibited when President Saddam Hussein's Baath Party government succumbed to the U.S. invasion 17 days ago.

In Najaf, a center of Shiite Muslim worship about 90 miles south of Baghdad, a band of several hundred teenagers threw stones at Marines patrolling the city. Rocks also were hurled at U.S. troops in Mosul, an ethnically divided city 200 miles north of the capital where Arabs have voiced resentment at close ties between U.S. forces and Iraqi Kurds, blamed for a wave of plunder in Arab neighborhoods.

These seven ideas, even if executed promptly and perfectly, wouldn't bring a darling liberal democracy to Iraq. As recent history of, well, just about everywhere, has taught that you can't build a thriving democratic state without law and order and a vigorous civil society: the nongovernmental associations, business groups, religious organizations, clubs, and social networks that knit a nation together.

The emerging politicised religious movement in Iraq has roots that go back further than the recent days of anarchy. In the Fifties and Sixties popular political debate in the Middle East was dominated by the secular, nationalist ideologies of the autocratic new rulers who had taken power in the vacuum left by the withdrawal of the Western colonialist powers. Yet such ideas, and the men who espoused them, were in much of the region discredited by successive military defeats by Israel and by the failure to deal with massive economic problems.

The populations of the Middle Eastern states, made more aware than ever of the grim realities of their lives compared to the West by modern education systems and communications, looked for alternatives. Through the Seventies the ideas of the Muslim Brotherhood and its more radical offshoots went from strength to strength.

In Iraq, however, Saddam and the Baath Party regime managed, through co-opting the middle classes and by vicious repression, to exclude religion from politics and from power. The old statist, nationalist, secular ideology was perpetuated through terror. As a result the shift in popular support to political Islamic ideology seen elsewhere never happened. With the removal of the Baath Party the lid has come off. In Iraq the shift is happening now, a generation late.

So what happens next? In Algeria a moderate political Islamist movement was suppressed by the government. With the moderates in prison, radical militants ran amok. Even today, after 12 years and more than 100,000 dead, civil war continues.

In Egypt massive repression, and significant concessions too, have restricted, but not ended, a violent insurgency launched by radical groups which moved to the fore when the more moderate elements were suppressed.

The lessons appear clear: engage the moderates or the consequences could be dire. If secular nationalism fails, and moderate political Islam is made to fail, then democracy is unlikely to be the ideology sought out by angry, humiliated, hungry people.

Even as the U.S. works to stabilize a postwar Iraq, Turkey is setting out to create a footprint of its own in the Kurdish areas of the country. In the days after U.S. forces captured Saddam's powerbase in Tikrit, a dozen Turkish Special Forces troops were dispatched south from Turkey. Their target: the northern oil city of Kirkuk, now controlled by the U.S. 173rd Airborne Division's 3rd Brigade. Using the pretext of accompanying humanitarian aid the elite soldiers passed through the northern city of Arbil on Tuesday. They wore civilian clothes, their vehicles lagging behind a legitimate aid convoy. They'd hoped to pass unnoticed. But at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Kirkuk they ran into trouble. "We were waiting for them," says a U.S. paratroop officer.

The Turkish Special Forces team put up no resistance though a mean arsenal was discovered in their cars, including a variety of AK-47s, M4s, grenades, body armor and night vision goggles. "They did not come here with a pure heart," says U.S. brigade commander Col. Bill Mayville. "Their objective is to create an environment that can be used by Turkey to send a large peacekeeping force into Kirkuk." . . .

By Wednesday U.S. paratroopers were holding 23 people associated with the Turkish Special Forces team. Some were drivers and aid workers. But a dozen of them, says Col. Mayville, were identified as soldiers. "We held them for a night, brought them in, fed them and watched their security. After all," he says wryly, "they are our allies." Early Thursday morning American troops escorted the Turkish commandos back over the border.

American forces arrested the self-styled mayor of Baghdad yesterday in a show of strength in advance of today's talks aimed at forming a provisional government of Iraq.

Mohammed Mohammed Mohsen al-Zubaidi, a returned exile associated with the opposition Iraqi National Congress, had been creating committees to run the city and claimed to have US backing. He was arrested on the bizarre charge of "exercising authority which was not his".

But the arrest, apart from dramatising that he did not have any official status, seemed designed as a warning to those political parties that have denounced the US occupation and threatened to set up an alternative government.

Western intelligence officials are playing down the significance of documents appearing to show that Saddam Hussein's regime met an al-Qaida envoy in Baghdad in 1998 and sought to arrange a meeting with Osama bin Laden.

"We are aware of fleeting contacts [between Baghdad and al-Qaida] in the past, but there were were no long-term official contacts," a well-placed source told the Guardian yesterday. "The documents do not take things further forward"

British security and intelligence agencies have persistently dismissed attempts by hawks in the White House to link Saddam's regime with al-Qaida, a link which would help London and Washington to argue that Iraq had posed an imminent threat.

Intelligence sources also played down the significance of documents found by the Sunday Times in the Iraqi foreign ministry which suggest France gave the regime regular reports on its dealings with American officials.

The sources described them as ordinary diplomatic traffic from the Iraqi ambassador in Paris.

Unexploded ordnance and landmines littering northern Iraq have killed or maimed more people - many of them children - since the end of the war than during the fighting, a Guardian investigation has revealed.

In the two weeks after the cessation of hostilities on the northern frontline, which divided the Kurdish self-rule area from government-controlled territory, as many as 80 civilians have died and more than 500 have been injured.

"We are facing an emergency situation," said Sean Sutton of the UK-based Mines Advisory Group, which is coordinating an operation in the region to clear unexploded ordnance and mines.

"Across Iraq, the detritus of war is killing, maiming and scarring for life adults and, most tragically, children."

In the north, human rights groups, anti-mine organisations and Kurdish regional authorities are struggling to document the casualties. And, because of a piecemeal approach to record-keeping, mortality rates could be even higher than suggested. . . .

He said the group had cleared most of the cluster bombs from the city in cooperation with US forces. But more needed to be done.

"We need funds to clear up this mess now. For the price of two cruise missiles we could save many lives."

On 25 April 2003, the newspaper Dagbladet (Norway) published photos of armed US soldiers forcing Iraqi men to walk naked through a park.

On the chests of the men had been scrawled an Arabic phrase that translates as "Ali Baba - Thief."

A military officer states that the men are thieves, and that this technique will be used again.

No word yet from the newly liberated Iraqi people about some of them being summarily found guilty of theft, forced at gunpoint to strip, having a racist phrase written on their bodies, and then made to walk naked in public. No doubt the Arab/Muslim world is impressed by this display of "democracy," "freedom," "due process," and "no cruel or unusual punishment."

We wonder if the soldiers will be using this technique on their comrades who stole $13.1 million in Iraq. Or the journalists who looted Iraq's art.

The case for invading Iraq to remove its weapons of mass destruction was based on selective use of intelligence, exaggeration, use of sources known to be discredited and outright fabrication, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.

A high-level UK source said last night that intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic were furious that briefings they gave political leaders were distorted in the rush to war with Iraq. "They ignored intelligence assessments which said Iraq was not a threat," the source said. Quoting an editorial in a Middle East newspaper which said, "Washington has to prove its case. If it does not, the world will for ever believe that it paved the road to war with lies", he added: "You can draw your own conclusions."

"There isn't any doubt that Iraq has had weapons of mass destruction," Blair said. "That is not in dispute, not by anybody. I remain confident they will be found."

There are three possible scenarios for Iraq. Under the optimistic one, the Americans will appoint a temporary government that will prepare elections for a representative Iraqi government. The U.S. will form a new police force and army, pull out gradually and hand over all authorities to the locals. Under the pessimistic scenario, however, an armed resistance will emerge against American presence; military arms will branch out from religious and national organizations; and terrorism will surge, until the U.S. will have to decide whether to let Iraq crash or stay there long-term.

The third scenario combines the first two: unable to reach constitutional consensus as to the character of the new government, a local government will be operating under emergency legislation; elections will be avoided in order not to allow the Shi'ites to take control; armed opposition to the Americans will emerge; and the American forces will stay on to look after the oil fields.

WASHINGTON, April 28 -- American forces in Iraq have signed a cease-fire with an Iranian opposition group the United States has designated a terrorist organization, and expect it to surrender soon with some of its arms, American military officials said today.

Under the deal, signed on April 15 but confirmed by the United States Central Command only today, United States forces agreed not to damage any of the group's vehicles, equipment or any of its property in its camps in Iraq, and not to commit any hostile act toward the Iranian opposition forces covered by the agreement.

In return, the group, the People's Mujahedeen, which will be allowed to keep its weapons for now, agreed not to fire on or commit other hostile acts against American forces, not to destroy private or government property, and to place its artillery and antiaircraft guns in nonthreatening positions.

The accord is apparently the first between the United States military -- which in early April was bombing the group's Iraqi camps -- and a terrorist organization, and it raises questions about how consistently the Bush administration intends to apply a policy that had vowed to crack down on terrorist groups worldwide.

One wonders whether most of the public will ever learn that the original case for war has turned out to be false. In fact, my guess is that most Americans believe that we have found W.M.D.'s. Each potential find gets blaring coverage on TV; how many people catch the later announcement -- if it is ever announced -- that it was a false alarm? It's a pattern of misinformation that recapitulates the way the war was sold in the first place. Each administration charge against Iraq received prominent coverage; the subsequent debunking did not.

Did the news media feel that it was unpatriotic to question the administration's credibility? Some strange things certainly happened. For example, in September Mr. Bush cited an International Atomic Energy Agency report that he said showed that Saddam was only months from having nuclear weapons. "I don't know what more evidence we need," he said. In fact, the report said no such thing -- and for a few hours the lead story on MSNBC's Web site bore the headline "White House: Bush Misstated Report on Iraq." Then the story vanished -- not just from the top of the page, but from the site.

Around 300 Iraqis accepted an American invitation to start the process of forming an interim government yesterday, surrounded by the tightest security since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

At the end of a chaotic 10 hours of rambling discussions in a Baghdad conference hall, delegates pledged by a show of hands to hold a new meeting within a month to select a transitional government.

The delegates gave no other details. American and British spokesmen talked up the conference, describing the "striking vibrancy and emotion" of the occasion, which had given people repressed by years of dictatorship their first chance to talk politics in public.

But they conceded that the meeting, which critics have called a gathering of US puppets, was "not sufficiently representative to establish an interim authority". About half the delegates were exiles, and the rest had remained in Iraq under the previous regime.

Apparently to disguise the poor attendance, officials refused to supply a list of those invited. Some delegates were afraid to have their names published, an official said. . . .

US and UK officials would not say how they had worked out the invitation lists. The two parties which had the largest representation in Iraq before Saddam's Ba'ath party imposed one-party rule were excluded. Abdel Karim al-Anazi, a member of the political bureau of the Islamic Dawa party, told the Guardian: "We have no idea what they plan to do at today's meeting. We wish the United States would leave Iraq quickly. Even today would be good".

Faris Faris, for the Iraqi Communist party, said: "No one has invited us. We don't know who was invited."

There were no representatives from the powerful Shia clergy, who have called for an immediate withdrawal of US forces.

Apart from the two main Kurdish parties, which run separate administrations in northern Iraq, none of the parties attending the meeting has a solid following. Many were small, newly created parties.

Even the controversial US-backed exile groups such as the Iraqi National Congress did not send their top people. . . .

US and British officials gave an optimistic view of the conference at a briefing at which they declined to be named, but the failure to organise a press conference further highlighted the meeting's lack of results.

The street corners of Tikrit were decorated with homemade shrines to Saddam Hussein yesterday, small portraits decked with flowers lying on the pavements.

The US had banned all birthday celebrations at Saddam's birthplace and former powerbase, but throughout the town residents marked the former dictator's 66th birthday with quiet defiance. . . .

Saddam's removal from power is a cause for celebration throughout most of Iraq but not in this city, made up mainly of Tikritis, Saddam's tribe, where support appears to be almost total. Many fervently expressed the hope that he will return to power. . . .

The Tikritis are unanimous in rejecting as a new leader the Pentagon favourite, Ahmad Chalabi, and this Sunni city is almost equally hostile to the idea of rule by one of the Shia clerics from the holy city of Najaf. For them, there remains only one leader: Saddam.

The Tikritis said they had no idea of his whereabouts.

Asked where Saddam was, Mohammed Abdullah, 55, a merchant, replied: "All over Iraq. Every single one of us is Saddam. God willing, I hope he will come back and fight the Americans.

The nerve centre for US air operations in the Gulf region looks likely to be moved from Saudi Arabia to Qatar, in what may herald a rethink of America's military presence. . . .

Riyadh allowed US forces to use its bases to control operations but refused to let US planes take off on strikes. The White House views the Saudi royal family as a guarantor of stability, and US troops in the country are seen as fuelling militant opposition to it.

The numbers of US troops would be reduced, Mr Rumsfeld said while visiting the Gulf.

"The forces that were necessary to liberate Iraq are not necessary for the stability period," he said, hinting they might fall below the peacetime 15,000. "Iraq was a threat in the region, and because the threat will be gone, we also will be able to rearrange our forces."

In an interview he gave to al-Jazeera, the Arabic channel, he said: "We have no plans for a long-term base in Iraq." But the US was not "pulling out" of Saudi Arabia. "We have a long-standing relationship we both value," he said.

Last year, John Judis and I published a book entitled The Emerging Democratic Majority, which argued that a series of economic, demographic, and ideological changes was laying the basis for a new Democratic majority that would materialize by decade's end -- not certainly, we argued, but very probably as long as the Democratic Party put forth decent political leadership to challenge the dominant, but dwindling, current Republican majority.

Our book arrived in stores last September. Two months later, in the midterm elections, the Republicans surprised nearly everyone by winning control of the Senate and further solidifying their majority in the House, unifying Republican control of the federal government for only the second time in half a century. Needless to say, this wasn't my ideal outcome. In the annals of publishing, this wasn't quite so unfortunate as, say, James Glassman's prediction of a 36,000 point Dow just before the 2000 stock market crash, but it still evoked a fair amount of understandable ribbing and forced me to think hard about our thesis. So after the election, I pored over survey data, county-by-county voting returns, and a great deal of underlying demographic data and thought long and hard about what the data showed. And as a result, I've decided that ... we're still right!

Last week's long-awaited nuclear talks between the United States and North Korea seemed, at first glance, disastrous. Over lunch on Thursday, Deputy Foreign Minister Li Gun took Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly aside and told him (according to U.S. officials) that North Korea already has some nuclear weapons and that "it's up to you whether we do a physical demonstration or transfer them." President Bush reacted dismissively, telling NBC, "They're back to the old blackmail game." . . .

However, developments over the weekend suggested something more subtle, and potentially hopeful, was going on. Yesterday's Los Angeles Times reported that Kelly told Japan's chief Cabinet secretary, Yasuo Fukuda, that the North Koreans had made a "bold, new proposal." Kelly also told other Asian officials that the meeting left him "more optimistic" than he had been after his session in Pyongyang last October. . . .

But what was this "bold, new proposal" that North Korea brought to the table and that made Kelly feel a bit more sanguine about the future than his president? The Los Angeles Times cited the South Korean newspaper Joong Ang Ilbo as reporting that the North Koreans said they would give up their nuclear program if the United States provided economic assistance and signed a non-aggression pact. (Today's Wall Street Journal cites Bush "administration moderates" to the same effect.)

It is unclear what aspect of this proposal is so "new"; it seems to be a reprise of North Korea's offer late last year. (One possibility may be that Pyongyang is no longer demanding an exact resumption of the 1994 arrangement, but would accept other terms of aid.) In any case, the question that the Bush administration must now face is this: What's the problem?

North Korea's president Kim Jong-il is probably the nuttiest leader on the planet; certainly he runs its most isolated regime. He's on the verge of going nuclear, and if he crosses that threshold he will have no compunctions about selling the products -- enriched uranium, plutonium, or bombs themselves -- to the highest bidder. And here he is, offering to give it all up if Bush normalizes relations and promises not to attack his territory? This may be "blackmail," but Bush didn't let harsh labels get in the way when he offered Turks $6 billion to let the 4th Infantry Division use their soil as a base for invading Iraq. If Bush were to accept Kim's terms, how exactly would that harm U.S. interests?

The (possibly lamentable) fact is, Bush has few options in this game and everybody knows it. (It's this universal knowledge that allows Kim to behave so outrageously.)

The decision by Iraqi delegates in Baghdad to try to cobble together a transitional government at the end of May has been prompted in part by a push from the Bush administration, which wants to move swiftly to put an Iraqi face on power, according to senior American officials.

The delegates' plan to convene a national conference sooner than planned was pressed by the United States from behind the scenes in what the officials described as a marked acceleration of efforts to forge a new Iraqi government.

The officials said the stepped-up process represented an ascension of the Pentagon's argument in what had been a bitter internal administration debate about how, when and under what terms the United States should hand over power to Iraqis.

The Iraqi delegates' decision to refer to a new governing body as a "transitional government," instead of an interim authority, the phrase favored by the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency, seemed to reflect the administration's new approach, which officials said had been endorsed by the White House in the last week. . . .

Ultimately, administration officials said, mounting signs of anti-American sentiments in Iraq, and some alarm over the Iranian influence, helped to give the Pentagon the upper hand in forging a consensus.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The retired general overseeing Iraq (news - web sites)'s postwar reconstruction said on Wednesday that his fellow Americans should beat their chests with pride at having toppled Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) without destroying the country's assets.

"We ought to be beating our chests every day. We ought to look in a mirror and get proud and stick out our chests and suck in our bellies and say: 'Damn, we're Americans!'," Jay Garner told reporters, saying that Iraq's oil fields and other infrastructure survived the war almost intact.

Garner, who was speaking after talks with visiting Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Baghdad, took the media to task for emphasizing anti-American demonstrations and dissent in the wake of the three-week U.S. led war that deposed Saddam.

Meanwhile, prime minister Tony Blair told parliament he remained "absolutely convinced and confident" that weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq.

In a bullish performance during prime minister's question time, he predicted his critics would be left "eating some of their words" when the banned arms are found.

As he spoke, military officers from more than 10 countries were meeting in London to discuss an international security force for Iraq.

The move is seen as a key step towards a transition from the US and British military occupation of Iraq to a multi-national force of a broader "coalition of the willing".

Few details have been made public, but Denmark and Poland confirmed they were attending. Poland said it had been asked to provide 4,000 troops for Iraq, and Denmark said it was planning to send 380.

Tony Blair's first public attempt to heal the diplomatic wounds of the Iraq war suffered a humiliating rebuff yesterday when Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, refused to lift UN sanctions and mocked the possibility that weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq.

Mr Putin also clashed with Mr Blair by demanding UN weapons inspectors be allowed back into Iraq and challenged Mr Blair's vision of a new world strategic partnership, arguing it would be unacceptable for the US to dominate the international community.

The public dressing down for Mr Blair came during a 63-minute press conference staged by the two men at Mr Putin's private residence outside Moscow. The two men had a fabled special relationship and Mr Blair had high hopes he would be able to wean Mr Putin away from his new anti-war alliance with France and Germany.

. . . Mr Putin said Russia and its partners "believe until clarity is achieved over whether weapons of mass destruction exist in Iraq, sanctions should be kept in place". Almost mocking Mr Blair, he went on: "Where is Saddam? Where are those arsenals of weapons of mass destruction, if indeed they ever existed? Perhaps Saddam is still hiding somewhere in a bunker underground, sitting on cases of weapons of mass destruction and is preparing to blow the whole thing up and bring down the lives of thousands of Iraqi people."

He added that sanctions could not be lifted since they had been introduced because Iraq had weapons of mass destruction."It is only the security council that is in a position to lift those sanctions, after all they introduced them."

He also derided Mr Blair's talk of a new world order, saying: "If the decision-making process in such a framework is democratic then that is something we could agree with, but if decisions are being made by just one member of the international community and all the others are required to support them that is something we could not find acceptable."

Mr Putin insisted that the weapons inspectors could return now so that they could be summoned to any site in Iraq to make a "professional conclusion" on whether the weapons existed. The inspectors could be protected by UN or blue-helmeted soldiers along the line of the settlement reached in Afghanistan. He added that Russia was in a position to take immediate steps.

The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, yesterday signalled a transformation in the US military presence in the Gulf region by announcing that all but a handful of American troops will be pulled out of Saudi Arabia by summer's end.

Despite vociferously insisting this week that the US is not "pulling out" of the country, the defence secretary's announcement amounted to that, reducing the 5,000 troops there to 400, who will mainly be there to train Saudi soldiers.

The Prince Sultan air base, largely rebuilt at a great cost to the US, will be largely abandoned, with none of the 200 American planes currently there remaining by the end of August.

Mr Rumsfeld, in a joint press conference at the air base with Prince Sultan, the Saudi defence minister, insisted the decision was a "mutual agreement" motivated by reasons of military strategy. . . .

"There are political advantages for both," said Tim Garden, security analyst at the Royal Institute of International Affairs.

"The US will have greater freedom of action, the Saudis will feel more comfortable, and neither of them will have to mention that it was a key demand of Osama bin Laden."

President Bush may want to rush out his victory declaration, but there is still plenty of unfinished business from this war. For one thing, there is the irritating matter of the war's official cause: Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Until they turn up, the nagging doubt will remain that both Bush and Blair talked up a threat to justify an unnecessary conflict. The damage Operation Iraqi Freedom has wrought to the US relationship with Europe goes on, too: just yesterday, the anti-war quartet of France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg announced a new European security and defence union, separate from Nato and pointedly excluding pro-war countries such as Britain. And the strategic reverberations of the second Gulf war are just beginning to be felt: now we learn that the US is to shift the bulk of its Gulf forces from Saudi Arabia to tiny Qatar. It surely can't be long before it decides the ideal location is newly won Iraq.