ON BOARD PRIME MINISTER TONY BLAIR’S PLANE, Sept 7: Baghdad should be forced to disclose its military potential, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Saturday, while heading for talks with US President George W. Bush on plans for an offensive against Iraq.

It was “essential... that there is a proper regime in place for monitoring inspections” of Iraq’s military, as the threat from the country’s suspected weapons of mass destruction was very real, said Blair, who has been Bush’s closest ally in trying to promote a military strike against the regime.

“We haven’t the faintest idea of what has been going on for the last four years other than what we know is an attempt to carry on rebuilding these weapons but the details of it is something that the Iraqi regime should be forced to disclose,” Blair told reporters.

The British leader, who was due to meet Bush at the US leader’s country retreat of Camp David in Maryland, had earlier said Britain was ready to pay the “blood price” of its close relations with the United States to take action against Baghdad.

Blair’s office in Downing Street has denied that the two men will be holding a “war council”, but they are widely expected to chart a strategy for persuading other world leaders, notably via the United Nations, of the need for military action.

According to Saturday’s edition of the British paper The Guardian, Bush and Blair were due to consider a possible UN Security Council resolution which would authorize the use of force against Iraq if it refused to allow UN weapons inspectors — withdrawn in 1998 — to return unconditionally to the country and be given free rein to check its military facilities.

“The longer you go on without a proper regime of inspection in place, the greater that (military) capability is,” Blair said on Saturday.

The original UN inspection regime, put in place after the 1991 war which expelled Iraqi forces from Kuwait, was ended just before the United States and Britain carried out military strikes against the country.

The two allies have since been carrying out air raids and patrols to enforce “no-fly zones” over northern and southern Iraq, although that policy has not been approved by the United Nations.

Since the UN pulled out its weapons inspectors, Baghdad had been able to carry on building its chemical, biological and maybe also nuclear capabilities, Blair said, adding that the outside world could not just stand by and turn a blind eye.

“Four years is a long time and we simply don’t know,” Blair said, adding: “The threat is very real and not to just to America or to the international community but to Britain.

“Whatever the inspection regime in place, it has to be fully effective.”

He said: “What I want to do today is work out the best possible way of ensuring that the issue of weapons of mass destruction, the chemical, biological or potential nuclear capability of (Iraqi leader) Saddam (Hussein) is dealt with effectively.”

Blair joined Bush on Friday in a diplomatic round of telephone calls to world leaders, telephoning Russian President Vladimir Putin and France’s Jacques Chirac, but failed to lift their opposition to a US-led military assault..—AFP