Iraq urged the U.N. Security Council on Friday to stand up to "the law of the jungle" and vote down any resolution authorizing war. The chief U.N. weapons inspectors praised new cooperation from Baghdad. U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq had their quietest day in weeks, returning to supervise the excavation of buried bombs and visiting two sites in the northern city of Mosul.

Mohammed Modhaffar al-Adhami, a member of Iraq's parliament, said the reports from the weapons inspectors should be enough to avert a war.

But there was no indication the Bush administration was backing down from its threats of attack. Secretary of State Colin Powell told the Security Council that Saddam Hussein's intent "has not changed" and said Iraq's performance on disarmament is "still a catalogue of no cooperation."

Al-Adhami accused Powell of twisting the chief inspector's words.

France Would Use Veto to Annul Any Resolution Legalizing War

The United States and Britain planned to give Saddam until March 17 to prove he's cooperating with disarmament or face war, diplomats said. France rejected the proposal even before it was made public, saying it would veto any resolution seeking authorization for military action.

Iraqis, meanwhile, prepared for the worst. More sandbagged fighting positions and foxholes appeared throughout Baghdad, and policemen wearing green helmets and carrying Kalashnikov assault rifles lined key intersections.

Japan Closes Embassy

Japan shut its embassy in the Iraqi capital and ordered its diplomats to leave, citing "heightened tensions," said Yushi Suzuki, an official at the Japanese Foreign Ministry.

Iraq's deputy oil minister took journalists on a tour of Baghdad's al-Doura oil refinery, saying soldiers would take up arms to protect it and that foreigners were living inside to dissuade any invaders from bombing it. The refinery was bombed in the Gulf War.

"We have plans to defend these sites with arms," Hussein al-Hadithi said.

He denied Iraq would set fire to oil installations, but predicted that in the event of a war, the price of oil could reach DLRS 70 a barrel.

Oil prices have been rising dramatically, and came within a penny of DLRS 40 a barrel last week. Analysts have said fears of war are contributing to the increase.

Several dozen self-described "human shields" were scattered around the refinery.

Aerial Bombs Unearthed

U.N. weapons inspectors visited a former helicopter airfield called al-Aziziya, 60 miles southeast of Baghdad, where Iraq has been unearthing 157 R-400 aerial bombs filled with anthrax, aflatoxin and botulin toxin that it says it destroyed there in 1991.
Inspectors are analyzing samples from the site to verify if they match Iraqi claims.

Another team visited several sites in the northern city of Mosul, including a seed company and the maintenance department of a railway station.

An American U-2 reconnaissance plane flew high over Iraq on Friday in support of the inspections, Iraq's Foreign Ministry said.

Anglo-American Jets Attack Iraqi Radar System West of Baghdad

Meanwhile, the U.S. Central Command said U.S. and British aircraft patrolling the southern "no-fly zone" attacked a radar system 230 miles west of Baghdad, which Iraq uses to locate, track and target aircraft.

U.S. and British planes have been enforcing zones in northern and southern Iraq since the Gulf War, originally to protect minority Kurds in the north and Shiite Muslims in the south from Iraqi government forces - but lately also to weaken Iraqi defenses as a prelude to war.

PHOTO CAPTION

Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammed Al-Douri, addresses a meeting of the U.N. Security Council, Friday, March 7, 2003. (AP Photo/Elise Ame