The chief U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix said Friday Iraq appeared to be making fresh efforts to cooperate with U.N. teams hunting banned weapons, as Washington said the "momentum is building" for war with Iraq. Iraq said U.N. inspectors Thursday held their first private interview with an Iraqi scientist linked to previous banned weapons programs, a key U.N. demand. Blix welcomed the move but said he wanted to see "a lot more" during his weekend visit to Iraq.

"We want to see disarmament of Iraq through the inspection process," he said in a speech to new weapons inspectors being sent to Iraq. "It requires active cooperation from Iraq, not on process but on substance."

Weapons inspectors have demanded that experts be interviewed without other Iraqis present, to protect informers from reprisal. To date, Iraq has refused to allow U2 spyplanes to overfly its territory to monitor suspected sites, which Secretary of State Colin Powell  said this week were being doctored by the Iraqis to hide banned weapons programs.

Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the U.N.'s atomic watchdog agency, the IAEA, travel to Baghdad this weekend for talks with Iraqi leaders seen by many as President Saddam Hussein's last chance to avert war.

They are to report to the U.N. Security Council on February 14. A critical report could increase pressure for a new U.N. resolution to authorize war.

President Bush  said Thursday he would support a new U.N. resolution authorizing war against Iraq, saying "the game is over" for Saddam and challenging the Security Council to stand up to Iraq's defiance.

"Having made its demands, the Security Council must not back down, when those demands are defied and mocked by a dictator," Bush said.

Iraq denies it has any weapons of mass destruction and on Thursday poured scorn on U.S. charges it was cheating inspectors or had links with al Qaeda, blamed for the September 11, 2001 attacks on U.S. cities.

Iraqi officials responded angrily to Powell, who on Wednesday presented the Security Council with spy satellite photos, tapes of bugged conversations and other material he said was damning evidence of Iraq's determination to hide weapons.

Saddam adviser Amir al-Saadi said the allegations were "outrageous and not convincing," and would be rebutted line by line in a detailed letter to the Security Council.

MOMENTUM FOR WAR

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in Rome for talks with Italian leaders, told reporters on his plane that "momentum is building" for possible war with Iraq.

Rumsfeld, on a mission to convince wavering allies of the case for military action, denied he would be making a hard sell to Europe's anti-war camp, led by France and Germany.

He said the "center of gravity is shifting in the (NATO ) alliance" away from older members France and Germany -- who oppose the U.S. stance toward Iraq -- and toward the new members in eastern Europe, who back Washington.

Rumsfeld will inspect U.S. troops and meet Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to underscore U.S. appreciation of Italy's support for Washington's position.

He will fly to Munich for a major European security conference at the weekend and hold talks with the defense ministers of Germany, Russia and other countries.

But the defense secretary insisted there would be "no hard sell" directed at France or Germany. "They are going to make up their own minds and they have. Germany certainly has.

"I would assume they would stick with it. I just don't know. I don't know what France will do," he said.

Suggestions by some analysts that opposition in Paris to a U.S.-led attack was weakening were countered by French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie Friday.

"For us, today, we are in the inspection phase. We are not in a phase of preparing for war," she told Radio France Internationale.

Washington's failure to convince its European allies were laid bare Thursday when NATO again pushed back a decision on measures to boost the defenses of member Turkey in the event of war with its neighbor Iraq.

The United States has also so far failed to convince another veto-holding Security Council member, Russia, to back the use of force against Iraq. Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov on Friday rejected calls for a second U.N. resolution for now.

"If there was a need for an additional resolution to ensure that the (U.N. arms) inspectors' work in Iraq continued we would be ready to consider this option," Ivanov told reporters in Moscow. "But today there are no grounds to talk about a resolution which would authorize the use of force against Iraq."

Britain's U.N. ambassador Jeremy Greenstock said, nevertheless, he believed it was "very likely" there would be a draft resolution in the second half of February which would secure a majority of the council's 15 members.

Nearly all Council members agree Iraq has fallen far short of compliance, but fewer say it is a big enough threat to warrant war.

The United States and Britain reserve the right to attack Iraq without another resolution, which could be blocked by one of the other three powers with a veto, France, Russia and China.

"I don't think that is what will happen," British Prime Minister Tony Blair  said in a televised interview Thursday night. "I don't think we will get to the position of vetoes."

PHOTO CAPTION

General Amir al-Saadi, adviser to President Saddam Hussein  (R) and Hussam Mohammed Amin, head of the Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate, show journalists a copy of pictures produced at the U.N. Security Council, during a news conference in Baghdad February 6,2003. The Iraqi government poured scorn on new U.S. accusations that it was elaborately deceiving weapons inspectors and had links with al Qaeda. Iraqi officials said they would write to the United Nations  to respond to Secretary of State Colin Powell , who on Wednesday presented the U.N. Security Council with spy satellite photos, recordings of bugged phone calls and other material he said was damning evidence of Iraq's determination not to disarm. (Suhaib Salem/Reuter