BAGHDAD/LONDON, 29 September — Iraq yesterday rejected a draft hard-line US-sponsored Security Council resolution on arms inspections as President George W. Bush’s drive against Baghdad hit snags after a week of lobbying at home and abroad. Iraq threatened a “fierce war” if attacked and dismissed the US-proposed resolution, backed by Britain, requiring Baghdad to comply with tough new arms inspection rules or face military action.

Iraq’s defiant rejection came amid a US and British diplomatic campaign to persuade other permanent members of the UN Security Council — France, Russia and China — to overcome grave concerns and back the proposal designed to rid Iraq of any nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.

Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan said Iraq would not accept extra measures contained in the draft resolution, which gives Iraq one week to accept demands to disarm and 30 days to declare all its weapons of mass destruction programs. “The stance from the inspectors has been decided and any additional procedure that aims at harming Iraq won’t be accepted,” Ramadan told reporters.

Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz warned that the United States would sustain huge losses if it attacked Iraq and that his country would fight a “fierce war”. Bush, whose avowed policy of “regime change” in Iraq means toppling President Saddam Hussein, has pledged to act without UN approval if necessary. He made a pitch yesterday in his weekly radio broadcast to Americans, saying Iraq posed a grave threat that must be stopped. “The danger to our country is grave and it is growing,” he said.

Seeking to press the US case, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Marc Grossman met Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov in Moscow yesterday. He failed to change Russia’s stance.

Moscow stood firm in calling for the rapid return to Iraq of UN arms inspectors, with the US envoy urging Russia to back the draft US Council resolution. “Our position is that UN weapons inspectors should return to Iraq as quickly as possible,” Ivanov said in televised comments. “The necessary conditions for this exist. But we are prepared to look carefully at the position of all the members of the UN Security Council.”

Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri yesterday labeled Washington-Tel Aviv the “real axis of evil” as diplomats and protesters upped the ante in the struggle over a possible US-led strike against Saddam’s regime. “The real axis of evil is the axis of Washington-Tel Aviv. This is the real axis of evil,” Sabri told reporters in Tehran, where he aims to raise opposition to the US strike from his country’s old archfoe Iran.

Anti-war sentiment sparked protest in cities across the globe, including a huge rally in London including lawmakers and public figures that organizers said drew 250,000 into the streets. At the demonstration in London, left-wing filmmaker Ken Loach said angrily: “We can’t get involved in this war. We can’t consider murdering another 100,000 Iraqis simply to pursue America’s interest in oil and their dominance in the region.”

The Stop the War Coalition said 400,000 people took part, but police more conservatively put the turnout at 150,000. The protesters, including many public figures and MPs, trekked past the Houses of Parliament and into Hyde Park.

Speaker after speaker mounted a stage overlooking the park to call US President George W. Bush a “dictator” and British Prime Minister Tony Blair his “poodle.”

“It may be that Britain will go to war in a matter of weeks,” veteran Labour Party left-winger Tony Benn told the protesters who spread themselves wide across the park’s vast lawns. “But nothing can take the British people into a war they do not accept,” Benn said.

Investigative journalist John Pilger, whose latest film on the Palestinians has just been broadcast in Britain, told the Hyde Park crowd that “Bush and Blair must be stopped.” London Mayor Ken Livingstone said: “This is a war for oil. It’s not a war about human rights. It’s certainly not about weapons of mass destruction.” The protest — which has “freedom for Palestine” as a parallel theme — was co-organized by the Stop the War Coalition and the Muslim Association of Britain, the most recognized voice of Britain’s estimated three million Muslims. (Agencies)