“As I’ve said all along, it would be helpful and useful. But I don’t believe we need a second resolution. Saddam Hussein hasn’t disarmed,” Bush said.

France countered that proposals it presented to the world body along with Germany and Russia to boost UN weapons inspections as an alternative to US war plans would enable Baghdad to be disarmed without bloodshed.

“We think that these measures as a whole are likely to preserve the unity of the Security Council and effectively disarm Iraq without seeing a drop of blood spilled,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Francois Rivasseau told reporters.

But Bush “has not given up hope that it can be still resolved peacefully as a result of Saddam Hussein coming under sufficient international pressure that he gets the message,” said spokesman Ari Fleischer.

The US president issued a warning to Iraqi leaders and generals who “take innocent life” or destroy vital infrastructure in the event of military action that they would be tried as war criminals.

The United States, Britain and Spain delivered the new initiative to the Security Council on Monday and launched an all-out diplomatic campaign to win passage amid opposition from veto-holders China, France and Russia.

“It’ll have the requisite votes to pass,” Fleischer predicted as Bush led efforts to line up the nine favorable votes needed for approval by the 15-member council, provided no vetoes are used.

Veto-wielding China said: “There’s no need to table a second resolution since resolution 1441 has not been fully implemented,”

Bulgaria is expected to support the US proposal, along with Britain and Spain, while Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, Mexico and Pakistan are undecided.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Washington’s top ally in the war preparations, rejected the alternative French-backed proposal, saying Saddam had to comply fully with UN demands to disarm.

“If he is not willing to cooperate, time will not help,” Blair told Parliament. “It takes no time at all for Saddam to cooperate. It just takes a fundamental change of heart and mind.”

Saddam indicated in an exclusive interview with US television network CBS that he had no plans to comply with a UN demand to start destroying his banned Al-Samoud 2 missiles by Saturday.

Chief weapons inspector Hans Blix insisted there could be no negotiations over the missiles but that he did not know if Iraq would destroy them.

Turkey said it was drawing up plans to allow some 62,000 US troops to use the country for a possible attack on Iraq, but it faced growing dissent ahead of a parliamentary vote on the deployment, possibly to be held today.