LONDON, Jan 28: The United States, wooing allies for war, may not wait much beyond the next UN inspectors’ report on Saint Valentine’s Day before unleashing an invasion to disarm Iraq and topple President Saddam Hussein, analysts say.

“We’ll hear a deafening drumbeat from the United States in the run-up to Feb 14,” said Iraq expert Toby Dodge of Warwick University. “I would be surprised if the air war had not started within seven days of that.”

The tone from Washington and London is already grim, despite appeals from many other capitals for the inspectors to be given more time to prove whether Iraq is defying a Security Council resolution which effectively told it to disarm or face war.

Britain joined the United States in declaring Iraq in “material breach” of UN disarmament demands on Tuesday, a day after chief UN arms inspector Hans Blix told the council that Saddam had not come clean about stocks of lethal weapons.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said a further report by UN weapons inspectors on Feb 14 was not an ultimatum, but warned Iraq that its “unbelievable” refusal to comply with UN demands had diminished chances of a peaceful outcome.

“The US-British deployment will be in place towards the end of February. They could start the air campaign a bit ahead of that, but probably won’t,” said Sir Timothy Garden, a defence expert at London’s Royal Institute of International Affairs.

“What happened yesterday (at the Security Council) keep everything bubbling along till mid-February when the Americans, Brits, Australians and anyone else involved will say, ‘We are going to do this anyway’, and challenge the council to come up with a resolution to support it,” Garden said.

“The more war looks inevitable, the more Saddam is likely to start obstructing the inspectors,” he added, arguing that this would create a self-reinforcing impetus for conflict.—Reuters