The two-hour meeting of Clinton with his top aides on Sunday on whether to use force to try to reopen Iraq's weapons sites to UN inspectors fell short of an immediate decision. Among the considerations are that Iraq's likely response to an attack would be a permanent ban on the international search for illegal chemical and biological weapons.

The latest standoff between Iraq and the United Nations started in August, but has escalated rapidly towards possible military confrontation with US and British forces in the Gulf in the last few days as UN inspectors left Baghdad.

According to Reuter reports from Baghdad, five UN arms monitors left Baghdad for Bahrain today after Iraq suspended cooperation with the UN commission searching for banned chemical and biological weapons, a UN official said. Ten moreinspectors would leave on Wednesday, Caroline Cross, special assistant to the director of the Baghdad Monitoring and Verification Centre (MVC), told media persons. Fifteen monitors left Iraq on Saturday after a decision by the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) chairman Richard Butler to cut its Baghdad-based staff by 20 per cent.

Military sources in the Gulf said that US-led military strikes against Iraq were closer than perceived in the region.

``The (unannounced) US decision in September on possible military action was coupled with the need to move quickly if the crisis deepened, as it has in the past few days,'' said one Western officer, speaking of preparations underway. ``The Americans said that this time they would not allow things to drag on... countries given time to state their opposition and argue the point, envoys start going to Baghdad to try to find a way out for them...'' a senior officer said.

British Defence Minister George Robertson, who arrived in Kuwait last night, has said the currentcrisis would not be allowed to drag into the new year.

Speaking from the Ali al Salem Air Base in Kuwait, Robertson today accused Saddam Hussein of triggering the worst crisis since the Gulf War and warned the Iraqi leader ``time is draining away''.

Standing beneath the wing of a British tornado warplane at a desert air base just south of the Iraqi border, he sent a blunt message to Baghdad. ``Don't underestimate the resolution of the international community. We mean it'', Robertson said.

``Saddam Hussein has engineered the most serious confrontation with the international community since the end of the Gulf War'', the British minister told media persons.

Robertson said Saddam would be making a serious miscalculation if he thought he could drag out the latest crisis over Iraq's refusal to cooperate with United Nations weapons inspectors.

He told pilots who would be in the front line of any attack on Iraq that ``patience is draining away and the option of force is still there''.

Robertson is on awhistle-stop tour of Kuwait and Bahrain to drum up support from Gulf Arab allies. Britain has said it wants to resolve the crisis diplomatically but the option of using force is not ruled out. He said, earlier he had received ``very strong and robust'' support in his talks with Kuwaiti leaders.

Meanwhile, in the face of the western alliance's threats, Iraqi ministers said they would not back away from a decision to bar UN inspections unless crippling economic sanctions were lifted.

Iraqi Trade Minister Mohammed Mehdi Saleh said Iraq had suffered so long under the UN sanctions that it had nothing to fear from new US threats.