But the signals from Washington were less sympathetic to a further round of negotiations at the UN, which could delay a war in Iraq.Diplomats admitted it was highly unlikely that other Security Council members would acquiesce to the US, widely perceived as moving too fast towards war and giving too little time for the inspections to work. A British government source said: "We do not regard January 27 as a deadline. We want the inspectors to have the time and space to finish their work."Mr Blix is legally obliged at the moment to set his compass by both of the texts concurrently. That will only change if the Security Council agrees on yet another text, in effect voiding the timelines set down in Resolution 1284 – but this is a step a majority of the Council will resist.Part of the split in the Security Council is about the importance of 27 January, the date when Mr Blix will present the 15 ambassadors with his first substantive report on how the resumed weapons inspections are going.Washington is increasingly indicating that it considers that day to be the point from which war preparations should go into high gear. By contrast, other countries are playing down the significance of Mr Blix's first report.Mr Blix intends to respect the parallel calendar for inspections and his cycle of reports as laid down in the earlier Resolution 1284. This will entail him coming back to the Security Council at the end of March with a separate report detailing what disarmament tasks Iraq will have to complete in the months following.America is fearful that this new date at the end of March will inevitably slow the momentum towards any agreement to authorise force And America's military planners can't wait that long.

By the start of April, the desert cauldron will already be heating up.. Ariel Sharon, who has survived scandal after scandal in his political career, looks to have bounced back yet again after corruption revelations threatened his re-election campaign and be heading for victory in elections on 28 January, opinion polls suggest. Although some polls were predicting that Likud could win as many as 40 seats at the start of the campaign, just a week ago, in the midst of the corruption scandal, Mr Sharon's support had plummeted and Likud was forecast to win only 27.Labour will win only 20 seats, according to the poll – a desperately poor showing for the traditionally powerful party. Labour's support has remained hovering around the same mark throughout the campaign, with Mr Mitzna's peace agenda failing to attract many outside the party faithful.Mr Mitzna's gamble this week, when the Labour Party formally pledged that it would not serve in a "national unity" coalition under Mr Sharon, as it was until a few months ago, appears to have failed.Mr Mitzna linked that decision to the revelation that Mr Sharon's family had accepted a £1m loan from a South African businessman, allegedly to pay off debts Mr Sharon had incurred from illegal foreign contributions to his campaign for the party leadership some years ago – the scandal that briefly threatened to topple Mr Sharon. But Mr Mitzna's aim seems to have been to convince the electorate that they could not have what most Israelis want, according to the polls: a coalition under Mr Sharon with Labour as the junior partner.Central to that was the other surprise of this elections: the massive surge in support for a previously small-time secularist party, Shinui, currently third in the polls. That led many to believe a possible election outcome was a coalition of Likud, Labour and Shinui under Mr Sharon. But Mr Mitzna's gamble appears to have failed – according to the polls, it is Shinui that has picked up voters since his announcement, not Labour.Under its charismatic leader Tommy Lapid, Shinui has campaigned by aggressively opposing the grip on power exercised by the highly religious minority in Israel.

It has proved to be fertile ground.There is huge resentment among the secular majority that the small religious parties who have traditionally been power-brokers in coalitions have forced governments to provide huge funding for religious schools and neighbourhoods. More than anything, secular Israelis resent the fact that while they serve in the army the religious are exempted.If the polls are right and Labour sticks to its guns and refuses to join his government, Mr Sharon's only option may be a coalition with several small religious right-wing parties. They are likely to push through more unpopular funding, and tie Mr Sharon's hands in dealing with the Palestinian issue.Many here are now suggesting that, if Labour does badly, the party will stab Mr Mitzna in the back and join a coalition under Mr Sharon. Meanwhile, the newspapers continue to rummage around Mr Sharon's past and publish new allegations almost daily.. The big question over yesterday's find of empty chemical warheads at an Iraqi ammunition storage area is whether the warheads contain traces of the nerve agent VX, the deadliest chemical weapon in Iraq's banned arsenal.