If, on the other hand, individual countries have legal instruments that might be applicable, they should invoke them without further delay.. From a desirable supplement to last year’s United Nations resolution 1441, the so-called second resolution has now assumed pivotal, almost epic, importance. On it hang, at the very least, the fate of Iraq, the credibility of the UN and the stability of the Blair Government. It would not be fanciful to add that whether it is submitted to a vote, whether it is passed and how it is worded will also reverberate far beyond New York, Baghdad and London. The rifts that it has opened up threaten the equilibrium of Nato and the European Union and the very existence of the “special relationship” between America and Britain. It lays bare divergent approaches to the role of international institutions, to the appropriate use of military force and to international law. Whether Donald Rumsfeld was offering Tony Blair an escape route from his domestic travails or firing a warning shot across an apparently “wobbly” Britain’s bows is almost immaterial.

Both are possible.The one interpretation that can be excluded is that Mr Rumsfeld was speaking rashly or out of turn He knew what he was saying, and why he was saying it. That the White House and Downing Street rushed to limit the damage with clarifications and denials only proved that the transatlantic divide was real and widening.The cost of acknowledging such a divide, however, would fall disproportionately on Britain. Hence the imperative, for Mr Blair, of obtaining this second resolution. Late yesterday, however, the Government was still not confident that the necessary nine Security Council votes could be obtained. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said only that he was “hopeful”.

Mr Blair in the Commons elegantly sidestepped any questions relating to a time beyond the second resolution. That is the uncharted future.The six demands formulated by British diplomats are a last desperate effort to bridge what may be an unbridgeable gap. They are “benchmarks”, designed to test Saddam Hussein’s willingness to embark on “real” disarmament. Mr Straw said they were intended to be “demanding but deliverable”. Whether either Baghdad or Washington will see them in the same light must be arguable. They are all repetitions of earlier demands, pared to their essentials: Saddam Hussein must make a public statement admitting that he has weapons of mass destruction He says he has none.