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WASHINGTON, Sunday (AFP,Rueter)

US President George W. Bush's push for a new United Nations resolution on Iraq and Congressional authorization for unilateral military action against Saddam Hussein has come up against hefty resistance.

At home, opposition leader Tom Daschle drew blood on the floor of the US Senate, denouncing the politicization of the prospect of a military offensive against Baghdad, which the Bush administration believes is assembling an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.

A draft resolution presented by the US leader to lawmakers would have earned him a blank check to wage a war against the leader that Bush on Thursday called "the guy who tried to kill my dad," a reference to former president George Bush.

Daschle was only one of a string of Democrats who came out swinging, accusing the president of using a war that would risk American lives as an election strategy.

"Clearly, the Republican pundits and Republican advisers have urged the White House to take full advantage of this for political purposes," he said Thursday.

"And I think we have to be very concerned about that as we work with them and deliberate about how best to run this country."

Added Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, older brother of the assassinated US president John F. Kennedy, war should be "should be a last resort, not the first response."

But it was former vice president Al Gore who offered the most searing criticism of the Bush administration's strategy of preemptive strikes against purported threats to the United States.

"If what America represents to the world is leadership in a commonwealth of equals, then our friends are legion," Gore said at the Commonwealth Club, a respected San Francisco-based public affairs forum. "If what we represent to the world is an empire, then it is our enemies who will be legion."

Abroad, only chief ally Britain has offered support to a strong resolution on Iraq that would set a tough timeline for arms inspections and deploy armed force as a consequence for non-compliance.

Security Council colleagues France, China and Russia, each of which holds the power to veto any United Nations resolution have remained unconvinced by the evidence Washington has put forward in support of its claims that Iraq was both linked to the al-Qaeda network responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks and developing weapons of mass destruction for an attack. Washington has yet to develop a timeline for the United Nations, but almost daily Bush comes back to his refrain: "If the United Nations Security Council won't deal with the problem, the United States and some of our friends will." However, the US leader has yet to elaborate as to who these "friends" are.

Meanwhile.Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri labelled Washington-Tel Aviv the "real axis of evil" as diplomats and protesters upped the ante in the struggle over a possible US-led strike against Saddam Hussein's regime. "The real axis of evil is the axis of Washington-Tel Aviv. This is the real axis of evil," Sabri told reporters in Tehran, where he aims to raise opposition to a US strike from his country's old arch-foe Iran.

US envoy Marc Grossman, accompanied by British Foreign Office envoy Peter Ricketts and their countries' ambassadors to Moscow, wrapped up two hours of talks with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov on a strong UN resolution on Iraq.

In Moscow, Grossman, US under secretary of state for political affairs, gave no indication of whether his team had made progress in securing Russian approval for a UN Security Council resolution that would give the United States to right to attack Iraq should Baghdad not fully comply with the demands of UN-mandated weapons inspectors.

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said after the talks that Moscow said weapons inspectors should return as quickly as possible to Iraq to assess an alleged weapons of mass destruction program.

"We attach particular importance to the quickest possible return to Iraq of UN weapons inspectors who must give their answer regarding the presence or otherwise of weapons of mass destruction," he said in a statement.

The New York Times reported that the draft resolution would give Iraq just seven days to agree and 23 more days to open up totally to inspections or face military strikes.

"Our purpose here today was not to negotiate an agreement," Grossman said after the talks.

"We were here to make a presentation. Our Russian colleagues had some questions and we tried to answer them. We were not here to make any agreement," he said.

Earlier Iraq threatened a "fierce war" if attacked and dismissed the U.S.-proposed resolution, backed by Britain, requiring Baghdad to comply with tough new arms inspection rules or face military action.

Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan said Iraq would not accept extra measures contained in the draft resolution, which gives Iraq one week to accept demands to disarm and 30 days to declare all its weapons of mass destruction programmes.

"The stance from the inspectors has been decided and any additional procedure that aims at harming Iraq won't be accepted," Ramadan told reporters.

Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz warned that the United States would sustain huge losses if it attacked Iraq and that his country would fight a "fierce war".

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