Security Council At Center Stage

Supporters and skeptics of United States policy on Iraq were expected to make their positions known at a key meeting of the United Nations Security Council Wednesday.

The meeting comes two days after top weapons inspectors faulted Iraq for failing to cooperate, and just hours after President Bush warned Congress that war was imminent.

Ahead of the meeting, Russia signaled a new openness to the possibility of using force. Other nations welcomed Mr. Bush's vow to present new evidence to the Security Council.

However, NATO delivered a setback to the United States Wednesday as four members voted to hold up alliance plans to send planes and missiles to defend Turkey if there is war with Iraq.

The Security Council seems to agree Baghdad needs to do more to cooperate with inspections. What the United States hopes to find out in Wednesday's meeting is whether that's enough to build international support for going to war to disarm Saddam Hussein.

In his State of the Union address, CBS News White House Correspondent Mark Knoller reports, the president has never spoken more belligerently about Saddam, denouncing him for refusing to disarm and for the torture chambers of Iraq.

"If this is not evil, then evil has no meaning," he said, and again vowed to disarm Saddam if he fails to disarm himself.

The president announced that on Feb. 5 Secretary of State Colin Powell will present the Security Council with "information and intelligence about Iraq's illegal weapons programs, its attempts to hide those weapons from inspectors, and its links to terrorist groups."

France, Russia and China, among the five veto-holding members of the council, have argued in favor of continued inspections and said they weren't ready to support a war at this stage.

But on Tuesday, Russia President Vladimir Putin warned that Moscow "may change its position" if Baghdad doesn't comply.

Without signaling a shift in its position, France on Wednesday welcomed Mr. Bush's pledge to present more detailed evidence.

"I'm delighted by this American decision," said Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin. However, French Ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere told a reporter, "Don't count on a change."

Both chief weapons inspector Hans Blix and nuclear inspections head Mohamed ElBaradei will participate in Wednesday's council meeting, to be held behind closed-doors, and are expected to answer questions council members posed after hearing their reports.

In a toughly worded assessment of Baghdad's cooperation with 60 days of inspections, Blix told the council Monday: "Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance, not even today, of the disarmament that was demanded of it."

ElBaradei was gentler and said nuclear inspectors had found "no evidence that Iraq has revived its nuclear program."

Both men said Iraq had obstructed access to scientists. On Tuesday, two more scientists declined requests for private interviews from the arms inspectors.

A senior Iraqi official said the inspectors exaggerated problems over progress but Baghdad would work on the problems, including scientists' rejection of private U.N. interviews.

Lt. Gen. Amir Rashid also said Iraq would allow U.N. reconnaissance overflights if the council told Washington to ground its attack planes during such missions.

Reaction to the inspectors' reports underscored differences among the allies, with Britain and the United States stressing Saddam's failure to comply to build a case for war, while Germany and France took up the call for the inspectors to be given more time.

At the NATO meeting, the French and Germans, backed by Belgium and Luxembourg, delayed for a second week the U.S. proposal to start military planning for a supporting role for NATO in case of war, saying it's too early to consider such a move.

Those proposals include sending AWACS surveillance planes and Patriot missiles to protect Turkey, a NATO member, from a possible counterattack by Iraq. NATO diplomats said the debate was becoming tense.

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer Tuesday warned against unilateral action.

"We underline the fact that the decision lies with the Security Council," he told reporters in Berlin. The European Union foreign affairs chief, Javier Solana, also insisted the U.N. should remain the center of gravity in the dispute, reports CBS News Correspondent Steve Holt.

Others were more welcoming of the president's remarks.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard welcomed the plan to bring more intelligence before Security Council. Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda called Mr. Bush's speech "a forceful, strong message."

But even some who were in the chamber as Mr. Bush delivered the address disagreed.

Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said the president "did not make a persuasive case that the threat is imminent and that war is the only alternative." Kennedy said he would introduce a resolution requiring Mr. Bush to present "convincing evidence of an imminent threat" before sending troops to fight Iraq.