DAVOS, Jan 25: World pressure mounted on the United States on Saturday to allow United Nations weapons inspectors more time to do their work in Iraq after they make a key report to the Security Council on Monday.

European Union president Greece said there was an emerging consensus in the 15-nation bloc that the inspectors should be given more time if chief inspector Hans Blix and International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohammed ElBaradei requested it.

“Obviously there is a consensus that, yes, we should give them the necessary time if they ask,” Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou said at a news conference at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

The United States has said that time is running out for Iraq to disarm peacefully or face U.S.-led military action. But European officials have said U.S. and British forces would not be fully in place for any war until late next month.

Switzerland said it had offered to host last-ditch talks between the United States and Iraq on its neutral soil in a bid to head off a looming war. But the U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, played down the move.

In 1991, then U.S. secretary of state, James Baker, met senior Iraqi leader Tariq Aziz in Geneva in an unsuccessful bid to persuade Baghdad to withdraw its troops from Kuwait on the eve of the Gulf war.

Mr Papandreou said he expected EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels on Monday to declare full support for U.N. efforts to deal with the problem of Iraq’s suspected weapons of mass destruction and urge a diplomatic solution to the crisis.

He said he had discussed the issue extensively by telephone with Mr Powell on Friday.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, whose country agreed this week to send troops for a possible war, spoke of giving the arms monitors three more weeks to continue trying to eliminate Iraq’s weapons programmes.

“It would be our view that the inspectors need some more time to complete their work.

“There is a proposal that there be a further report (from Blix and ElBaradei) by mid-February. And we would think that’s appropriate,” Downer said while talking to reporters in Davos. “But it is already clear that Iraq has not fully cooperated.”

Spanish Foreign Minister Ana Palacio, who met Mr Powell in Washington on Friday, said Madrid would support extending the inspectors’ mission by two or three weeks if it would help produce a breakthrough.

Any deadline for the inspectors to complete their work would have to be “close and very clear”, she said in an interview with the Spanish-language television channel, CNN. Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa said in an interview that a war on Iraq would likely inflame the Middle East, fuelling popular anger and anti-American unrest.

The former Egyptian foreign minister asked why the world would take that risk when U.N. weapons inspectors were able to do their job in Iraq.—Reuters