Weapon cops find no smoking gun in Iraq

But Powell took aim at council members who had called for continued Iraqi weapons inspections, accusing them of refusing to face reality. He said Iraq had not, was not and would not comply with U N disarmament demands.

He said the time was fast approaching for the world body to consider military action to enforce its requirements.

‘‘We now are in a situation where Iraq’s continued non-compliance and failure to cooperate — it seems to me, in the clearest terms — requires this council to begin to think through the consequences of walking away from this problem or the reality that we have to face this problem,’’ Powell said.

The White House also said the inspectors report did not give ‘‘any comfort’’ that Baghdad is complying with disarmament demands. ‘‘Nowhere did the world receive any comfort today that Saddam Hussein has shown the inspectors that he is disarming. Quite the contrary,’’ spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters.

In his report, Blix gave a mixed picture of Iraq’s efforts to disarm, providing fodder to Security Council members, such as France, which want inspections to continue and the United States and Britain, which say war may be the only recourse to force Iraq to disarm.

French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin immediately told the council inspections needed more time. Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan agreed and called for more inspections but Spanish Foreign Minister Ana Palacio sided with Washington, saying Iraq had not cooperated and the council would have to assume its responsibilities.

Mohamed Elbaradei, in charge of nuclear arms inspectors, told the council a number of issues were still under investigation but declared again he found no weapons.

‘‘We have to date found no evidence of ongoing prohibited nuclear or nuclear-related activities in Iraq,’’ said Elbaradei, head of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency. Blix also reported findings by a panel of experts that one of Iraq’s new missile systems exceeds the range limit set by Security Council resolutions.

‘‘The experts concluded that, based on the data provided by Iraq, the two declared variants of the Al Samoud 2 missile were capable of exceeding 150 km in range. This missile system is therefore proscribed for Iraq.’’

On another missile, Al Fatah, Blix said: ‘‘The experts found that clarification of the missile data supplied by Iraq was required before the capability of the missile system could be fully assessed.’’

‘‘Iraq is free of weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, chemical and biological,’’ Saddam said in a meeting with Iraq’s number two, Ezzat Ibrahim, and Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan.