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UNITED NATIONS, Thursday (Reuters) -France and Germany said on Wednesday it was illegal for the Bush administration to depose Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and Russia maintained there was no proof Iraq posed a threat to the United States. The five foreign ministers addressed a U.N. Security Council meeting called to hear a report by chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix, who expressed disappointment inspections were curtailed.

All the ministers called for a role for the U.N. inspectors and British Ambassador Sir Jeremy Greenstock suggested they could verify disarmament in the future "when there is an administration in Iraq, which is prepared to cooperate fully, actively and unconditionally."

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said no U.N. Security Council resolution authorized the use of force against Iraq outside the U.N. Charter and "not one of them authorizes the violent overthrow of the leadership of a sovereign state."

Ivanov said if there were "indisputable facts" showing Iraq posed a direct threat to the security of the United States "then Russia, without any hesitation, would use any means available under the U.N. Charter to eliminate such a threat.

"However, the Security Council today is not in possession of such facts," Ivanov said, in a reference to the Bush administration's linkage of terrorism to Saddam. In his address to the council, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said, "We are meeting here only a few hours before the guns are fired."

He said a war against Iraq would exacerbate terrorism in the Middle East. "To those who think that the scourge of terrorism will be eradicated through what is done in Iraq, we say that they run the risk of failing in their objective."

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer was blunter, saying that a large majority of people in Germany and the rest of Europe were troubled by the impending military action, having gone through the horrors of war all too often.

"Those who know our European history understand that we do not live on Venus, but, rather that we are the survivors of Mars. War is terrible," he said. "There is no basis in the U.N. Charter for a regime change with military means."

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