DUBAI, Feb 16: Iraq today softened its stand and offered a ``political dialogue'' with the United States to resolve the weapons crisis.Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed Said Al-Sahhaf said in Amman, ``The dialogue should be with no pre-conditions and we strongly believe that it would remove all obstacles of having a normal bilateral relation,'' he said.Meanwhile, the US continued its military building in the Gulf and sought help from other countries in the world even as China reiterated its stand of opposing any attack on Iraq.``China appreciates and supports diplomatic efforts made to ease tensions and seek a peaceful solution to the crisis,'' Chinese President Jiang Zemin and vice premier Qian Qichen said.The United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan awaited a green signal from the US to go to Baghdad in a last ditch effort to defuse the crisis amid mounting international pressure as his three-member team held talks with senior Iraqi officials on inspecting sites suspected of amassing biologicalweapons.The UN chief, whose impending trip to Baghdad on Wednesday, is billed as the ``last hope'' to resolve the crisis before the US and Britain launch military action on Iraq, continued to wait for Washington's response.Annan, who is under pressure from Russia, France and China, Italy, Egypt and a host of other countries, was willing to travel to Iraq only after getting some signals of success in his missions, officials said. Russia said that it attached much importance to the visit of Annan to Iraq in a bid to diffuse the crisis.The Foreign Minister of Qatar also travelled to Baghdad for talks on the Iraqi crisis, becoming the highest level Gulf official to visit the Iraqi capital since the 1991 war over Kuwait.Meanwhile, Iraq has denied reports that it was smuggling technology and weapons of mass destruction to friendly countries like Libya, Sudan, Yemen and Algeria. The Iraqi presidential advisor, Amir al Saadi, dismissed these remours as ``silly''.Earlier, Egyptian President HosniMubarak warned that the situation in the Arab world could deteriorate if the US goes ahead with military strikes on Iraq. In an interview to the Financial Times in Cairo on Sunday, Mubarak favoured a diplomatic solution by saying, ``I think things will become much more serious with air strikes''.New Zealand, as a small token of contribution to the US military options, offered to send two surveillance aircraft and up to 20 special commandos to join the US led coalition.
