"We have come into agreement with the United Kingdom on what the elements of the resolution should look like," Powell told a US Senate committee as the US government stepped up efforts to secure approval for military action against Iraq's President Saddam Hussein.

President George W. Bush said he was also close to agreement with Congress on a strong resolution that would give him domestic authorisation to order force against Iraq if necessary. Congress has been bitterly debating Bush's request this week.

Powell said he had spoken with the foreign ministers of the four other permanent members of the UN Security Council about the new UN resolution that Bush has demanded.

"We are a long way from getting an agreement (on the council), but we are working hard," Powell said. "There are many points where we are in agreement and there are some outstanding issues that have to be dealt with."

Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Marc Grossman was to go to France and Russia, where opposition to new UN action is highest, to discuss the draft.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin said earlier his country was sticking to its position that the Iraq crisis should be resolved quickly without a new UN resolution.

"We favour a rapid resolution of the situation by political and diplomatic means, on the basis of existing UN Security Council regulations and in line with the principles of international law," Putin told a group of new foreign ambassadors to Moscow, including from Iraq.

France wants two resolutions with force only threatened in the second if a proposed new mission by UN weapons inspectors fails.

Putin and France's President Jacques Chirac held telephone talks Thursday and agreed to take the "same approach" working together at the UN Security Council, a spokeswoman for Chirac said in Paris.

Parallel to the intense diplomatic activity, US warplanes struck Basra airport in southern Iraq and knocked out its radar in the latest operation in the no-fly zones that have been policed by US and British jets since the 1991 Gulf War.

Iraqi television said "US ravens of evil" destroyed a civilian radar system at the airport in what a Baghdad government spokesman called a "terrorist" act.

But a US Defense Department spokesman said the attack hit a mobile air defense radar system at Basra airport.

Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel David Lapan said: "They were using it to target our aircraft over the last week or so.

"Bottom line is, we're not going to let him (Saddam) put equipment in areas and then use it against us."

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the United States has solid information about top-level contacts between al-Qaeda and Iraq going back a decade, including possible chemical weapons training.

Links between the terrorist group that carried out the September 11, 2001, attacks and the Iraqi regime Bush wants to bring down have intensified since 1998, Rumsfeld said.
"We do have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al-Qaeda members, including some that have been in Baghdad," he said.

"We have what we believe to be credible information that Iraq and al-Qaeda have discussed safe-haven opportunities in Iraq and reciprocal non-aggression discussions."

The Pentagon is meanwhile making plans to train Iraqi opposition forces for military operations in the event of a war, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace said.

According to the Washington Post, the Defense Department has begun compiling a list of about 1,000 likely recruits from names submitted by Iraqi opposition groups.

Kuwait said it has already set up early warning systems to detect nuclear, biological and chemical arms as part of moves to defend itself in case of a US-Iraq conflict, but that the system had been in place for some time.

Ukraine, which has denied US charges it illegally supplied arms to Iraq, said it will ask the UN to send experts to Kiev to investigate the allegations.
bur-tw/ceh
AFP

(NAMPA/AFP)

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