'I expect to put forward information and evidence which will fill in some of the gaps,' U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Wednesday of his Feb. 5 appearance before the UN Security Council. Photo: Charles Dharapak/AP

United Nations — The United States is in the "final phase" of diplomatic efforts to disarm Iraq, and it promises to give the UN new evidence that Saddam Hussein is building weapons of mass destruction, and that he must be deposed, by force or by sending him to a U.S.-arranged exile.

"We are now entering the final phase," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Wednesday as the 15-member United Nations Security Council debated how to proceed. "During this final phase, what is about to unfold is a diplomatic window," in which the United States would intensify consultations with its European allies and the UN.

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But the United States failed Wednesday to convince key allies on the Security Council that time has run out for Iraq to co-operate with weapons inspections, when a majority of council members continued to call for peaceful disarmament and diplomacy.

Of the countries that spoke at a crucial council meeting, nine supported giving more time to the inspectors to pursue Iraq's peaceful disarmament — France, Russia, China, Germany, Mexico, Chile, Guinea, Cameroon and Syria, council diplomats said. Only Bulgaria and Spain focused more on demands on Iraq than on continued inspections.

Away from the UN, however, eight European leaders broke ranks with France and Germany by saying the European Union needs to support the United States. In an article in The Times newspaper and several others across Europe and the United States, the leaders of Britain, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Denmark, and EU applicants Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic appealed for unity.

"The Iraqi regime and its weapons of mass destruction represent a clear threat to world security," they wrote in a thinly veiled appeal to doubters French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

British Ambassador to the UN Sir Jeremy Greenstock said a critical report of Iraq's co-operation on Monday by chief arms inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei had changed "the character of the debate" at the UN.

Diplomats said Britain and the United States might want the council to declare a "material breach" — language to justify war — after U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell addresses the Security Council on Feb. 5.

Mr. Powell gave a hint of what he will bring to the council. "I expect to put forward information and evidence which will fill in some of the gaps," he said Wednesday. "The information I present — some of it will be an expansion of information that has already been seen, some of it is information that has been given to inspectors and some of it will be new information that was really not relevant to the inspectors' work but relevant to making the case with respect to the Hussein regime's possession of weapons of mass destruction."

With U.S. troops massed within striking distance of Iraq and the U.S. military confirming that a small number of troops are in Kurdish-controlled Northern Iraq preparing for war, the Bush administration is floating the hope that a bloody conflict could be avoided by Mr. Hussein voluntarily relinquishing power.

"If he were to leave the country, and take some of his family members with him and others in the leading elite that have been responsible for so much trouble during the course of his regime, we would, I'm sure, try to find a place for them to go," Mr. Powell said. "That certainly would be one way to avoid war, and we have indicated that before."

But given Wednesday's statement out of Iraq, there seems little chance of Mr. Hussein leaving.

"If they commit the evil aggression . . . we are not afraid of evil, but we are trying to avoid it, to drive it away. But when evil is determined, God willing, we break its neck in Iraq," Mr. Hussein said on television during an appearance before military officers.

Diplomats said Mr. Powell's appearance before the UN will be a pivotal moment in the crisis, which many see as resembling the high-stakes 1962 speech of then U.S. ambassador to the UN Adlai Stevenson, who made president John Kennedy's case for Washington going on a war footing against the Soviet Union during the Cuban missile crisis.

He won over most of the UN membership by showing aerial photographs of almost completed missile silos in Cuba, proving that the Soviet Union had been lying about its nuclear ambitions off the U.S. East Coast.

There is still no clear indication whether Mr. Powell can provide such incontrovertible evidence; there are indications the United States will offer more circumstantial evidence to the world body.

U.S. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld said nobody should expect such black-and-white proof of Iraq's attempts to build up nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Instead, he said, the world needs to analyze the Iraqi regime's record of operating clandestine weapons programs in violation of UN orders to disarm.

"You have a country that is out in the world buying things that are necessary for the development and progress in their chemical, biological and nuclear programs," he said. "And they're doing it not openly, and saying, 'It's dual-use material, and we're doing it innocently,' but clandestinely and paying more money than they need to.

"That, to me, is evidence as hard as a photograph."

There is deep resistance among three of the five permanent members of the Security Council. Britain is on side. But China, Russia and France have said they want the UN inspectors to have more time to scour Iraq, to prove or disprove the need for military action. Russia, which has been viewed as coming around to Mr. Bush's position, called yet again on the United States to present evidence that Iraq presents a danger.

Russian Ambassador to the UN Sergei Lavrov said the evidence Mr. Powell would present must be "convincing," adding, "We would like to see undeniable proof.

"We believe that inspections must continue, and that if Iraq stops co-operating with inspectors and starts blocking inspections, we must look into it."

With reports from Associated Press and Reuters News Agency