Blair urges Iraq to cooperate

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LONDON, England (CNN) -- U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq "can have as much time as they need" if Iraq is cooperating, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has said.

Speaking on Wednesday, Blair stressed that the U.N. Security Council must decide the level of Iraq's cooperation.

But he told the House of Commons that "action should follow" if Iraq is found not to be cooperating fully with the inspectors.

He was speaking as U.N. weapons inspectors prepared to begin destroying 10 artillery shells filled with potentially deadly mustard gas -- weapons that were inventoried by previous inspection teams but never destroyed. (Full story)

Blair told MPs: "The judgment that has to be made is the judgment of the Security Council as to whether there is full and complete cooperation of Iraq with the inspectors.

"If Iraq is cooperating, then the inspectors can have as much time as they need and as much time as they want to do their work.

"I think we should go back to Resolution 1441 and what it says, which is that Iraq should have a final opportunity to disarm itself through the weapons inspectors, that it has to cooperate fully.

"If they are in breach of that resolution, then I believe that action should follow."

Blair also said that he believes a second resolution directly authorising the use of military action to disarm Iraq is possible, and added that the use of such force "should be resolved through the United Nations."

"It is best to deal with this through the United Nations," he said.

"But the United Nations has to be the way of dealing with this issue, not the way of avoiding dealing with it."

Should the United Nations fail to back its own resolution, he said: "Iraq would be free to develop weapons of mass destruction."

Blair said the decision about whether to go to war over Iraq must be taken by weighing both the moral consequences of war and the morality of not going to war.

Blair said that the current policy of sanctions -- and the manner Iraqi President Saddam Hussein administers those sanctions -- has left Iraq in at least as dire straits as a war.

He said: "The fact is the only alternative to disarmament by the United Nations is that we keep sanctions in place year on year on year."

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