NEW YORK, Jan 16: The United States could launch military action against Iraq even if UN weapons inspectors do not turn up any new evidence against Saddam Hussein, the New York Times reported on Thursday.

The Bush administration is also not heeding calls from other nations that it should seek explicit authorization to go to war from the UN Security Council, the paper added.

Three of the five permanent members of the Security Council — China, Russia and France — have said the issue should be discussed in the Security Council and an unambiguous and clear authorization for war should be given by the Council. Britain, the another permanent member, is not clear on its position although it is siding with the US on the issue so far.

Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix said on Thursday that he would tell Iraq the situation was “very tense and very dangerous” and only fuller cooperation with his team could avert the option of war.

Mr Hussein, a senior administration official, told the Times that the timetable for a decision about war would be “driven by events”.

Those include a report to be submitted by the United Nations weapons inspectors on Jan 27 and evidence that Mr Hussein is truly complying with the United Nations demand that he give up any weapons of mass destruction.

In another sign of the growing frustration with what the White House views as stalling and evasion by Iraq, the official said Mr Hussein was intimidating his scientists into refusing to travel outside Iraq for interviews about Baghdad’s weapons programmes. Iraq has said none of its scientists wanted to go outside the country for interviews.

“From that kind of regime, that’s called marching orders,” a US official told the paper.