ROBIN COOK signalled to fellow ministers yesterday that he will quit the Cabinet if Tony Blair takes Britain into war with Iraq without a second UN resolution.

As America and Britain strove to keep diplomacy alive, with suggestions that the UN negotiations might last until Monday, Mr Cook “put down a marker” at a tense Cabinet meeting that he would go if the UN did not sanction war.

His remarks were said to have been coded but, according to several present, left little doubt about his intentions. Clare Short, the International Development Secretary, has also threatened to resign.

The sense of impending conflict was fuelled when the Government advised the Queen not to make a two-day visit to Belgium next week — it was felt that the head of state should be in the country at such a crucial time.

Mr Blair enlisted Gordon Brown and John Prescott to rally Labour MPs and the public behind the case for war, and there were signs that the backbench rebellion was being controlled. Mr Brown, who made a ferocious attack on the French during the Cabinet meeting, gave a series of interviews in which he accused France of unreasonably blocking attempts to reach international agreement.

At the UN, Britain pushed America to agree to concessions in a desperate effort to get a “war resolution”, but was still having trouble winning support for its compromise plan. It offered to drop any reference to a deadline from the draft resolution, incorporating instead a ten-day deadline in a separate national statement. That way council members would not be committing themselves to an ultimatum, but they would vote in the knowledge that Britain had given Baghdad ten days to fufil a list of demands.

Washington refused formally to endorse the compromise until it saw how much support it attracted and British officials admitted they were straining the limits of what Washington could accept. France, Germany and Russia still objected to the proposal, arguing that it still contained an effective authorisation for military action.

President Bush did soften his position by suggesting that he would be happy to see negotiations carry on through the weekend. His Administration also acknowledged for the first time that there may never be a vote. Despite Mr Bush’s demand last week that he wanted to see everyone’s cards on the table, Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, said the options remained “to go for a vote and see what members say, or not go for a vote”.

It may now be Monday before a decision is made about whether to put the resolution to the council, but whatever happens, President Saddam Hussein’s disarmament deadline will still be next week, senior diplomats said.

Mr Blair promised the Cabinet that there would be another meeting and possibly a Commons debate before military action were approved.

British diplomats remained cautious about the chances of getting a new resolution, but there was interest in France’s apparent willingness to talk. Dominique de Villepin, the Foreign Minister, said that Paris wanted to achieve a consensus in the Security Council and that France “confirms its openness to seize all opportunities”. Earlier he had dismissed as “part of the logic of war” Britain’s six tests for Saddam.

That provoked a stinging attack from Downing Street at President Chirac’s declaration that France would veto a new resolution “whatever the circumstances”. “If you inject into the diplomatic bloodstream a strategic, in principle veto, then that’s going to poison the system and present very real difficulties,” Mr Blair’s spokesman said.

Although the diplomacy is taking longer than Washington envisaged, American military planners still hope to win Turkey’s agreement to open a northern front, and remain anxious to exploit the new moon in early April.

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