HIGHLIGHTS: International Community Should Stand up to Saddam Hussein: Powell||Bush Still Ready to Act Unilaterally||Despite Fledgling Campaign by Bush Top Advisers, Americans Still Believe White House Has Yet to Make a Convincing Case against Iraq||Baghdad Goes Business as Usual as Preparations for Referendum on Saddam's Rule Forge Ahead|| STORY: Iraq reacted with defiance and Russia underlined international concern on Sunday as U.S. President George W. Bush's top advisers pressed a fledgling campaign for collective world action against Saddam Hussein, citing Baghdad's growing nuclear threat.

An Iraqi minister vowed his country would defend itself against any U.S. attack, while Bush's national security aides appeared on U.S. television programs to preview the president's upcoming appeal to the United Nations.

"Saddam Hussein is not just offending the United States. Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi regime, by their inaction, by their violation of these resolutions over these many years, is affronting the international community," said Secretary of State Colin Powell on "Fox News Sunday".

"The United Nations should feel offended. The United Nations should feel that something has to be done," Powell added. "We're putting the cards on the table for our friends and allies. This is the time to deal with a problem that's been there for years."

But while Powell and others said Bush would present a forceful case, hoping to counter the misgivings of many nations that oppose unilateral U.S. military action, they insisted the president would retain the option should it become necessary "to act unilaterally to defend ourselves", Powell said.

Americans, however, continued to think the administration had yet to make a convincing case against Iraq, and most interviewed in a New York Times/CBS News poll released Saturday wanted U.S. congressional as well as allied support before any U.S. assault.

Vice President Dick Cheney said he hoped the U.S. Congress, which plans hearings in coming weeks, takes a vote on the matter before it recesses for the year.

And Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told CBS "the fact that there is not unanimity today should be no surprise. He (Bush) has not made the case... and the case will be made."

BUSINESS AS USUAL IN BAGHDAD

In the Iraqi capital, it was apparently business as usual as authorities went ahead with plans for a mid-October referendum on the rule of Saddam, whom Bush has pledged to topple.

According to the official Iraqi News Agency, Foreign Minister Naji Sabri also briefed a Cabinet meeting conducted by Saddam on a recent resolution by Arab League ministers rejecting U.S. threats against Iraq.

Baghdad also received support from an unlikely quarter -- former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter, an American who told the Iraqi parliament there was no evidence the oil-rich country was harbouring nuclear, biological or chemical arms.

A U.S. attack would be a "historical mistake", Ritter said.

Bush had talks on Saturday with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who said afterward they had "total determination" to deal with Iraq but wanted the broadest international support.

Blair and Bush focused on a potential nuclear threat from Iraq at their Camp David talks, but both leaders left open whether they would take military action to counter it without the backing of other states.

Voicing defiance in the face of such a threat, Iraqi Trade Minister Mohammed Mehdi Saleh said during a visit to Cairo, Egypt: "We hope to avoid war, but if it's imposed on us we will fight to defend our land, our sovereignty and our independence."

Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis ruled out joining a U.S.-led attack on Iraq, saying it would only take part if there was United Nations backing for action.

Simitis said Greece, a NATO member that takes over the EU presidency in four months, believed the evidence so far did not justify an attack.

Russia stressed its opposition to any war against Iraq, saying this would split the international anti-terror coalition built after the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Attempts to intervene in the internal affairs of a sovereign state would result in "irreversible damage to the activities of the anti-terrorism coalition," Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov told Itar-Tass news agency.

BAGHDAD CONDITIONS ON INSPECTIONS

Bush goes to the United Nations on Thursday to make the case for tough action to disarm Iraq, although veto-holding Security Council members have already expressed grave doubts. Apart from Russia, France and China are also skeptical.

Aware of such splits, Iraq's foreign minister repeated in an interview Sunday Baghdad's offer to accept the return of U.N. arms inspectors -- but only under a comprehensive deal that would lift a crippling 12-year-old embargo imposed for Iraq's invasion of Kuwait that was ended by the 1991 Gulf War.

Baghdad's cause was given an unusual boost by Ritter, who has become a vocal critic of U.S. Iraqi policy since quitting his job in 1998 as a member of the U.N. body in charge of dismantling Iraq's weapons.

"The rhetoric of fear that is disseminated by my government, has not, to date, been backed by hard facts that substantiate any allegations that Iraq is today in possession of weapons of mass destruction," he said.

Bush and Blair cited security reports of new construction at sites previously linked to Baghdad's weapons programs and intelligence about Saddam having been close to acquiring nuclear capability as evidence to support swift action against Iraq.

The U.S. officials pointed on Sunday to a report Iraq had been pursuing a global search for necessary materials, including efforts in the past year to buy thousands of special aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium.

"We don't want 'the smoking gun' to be a mushroom cloud," national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told CNN.

PHOTO CAPTION

Scott Ritter (2L), a former U.N. arms inspector who rejects U.S charges that Itaq is developing weapons of mass destruction, addresses Iraqi parliament in Baghdad September 8, 2002. Ritter said in Baghdad on Sunday it would be a "historical mistake" for Washington to attack Iraq. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj