BEFORE the first shot can be fired in a war on Iraq, a battle has erupted between the world’s leading hawks and doves for the vital prize of world opinion.

In a dizzying round of diplomacy, hardly a single world leader has been left untouched by the conflict, which yesterday dominated the debate in the European Union, at the Non-Aligned Movement summit of 116 nations in Malaysia and engulfed discussions in the capitals of the Middle East, Africa, Asia and the Americas.

Meetings are being arranged and ministers dispatched around the globe from the leading capitals to provincial backwaters that many would have difficulty finding on a map. The phones are ringing off the hook and those with e-mails getting messages offering persuasive arguments, lucrative inducements and the odd subtle threat.

Leading the charge are the Americans and the British, who need to shore up international support for their tough stand against President Saddam Hussein, in particular from the undecided countries with seats on the UN Security Council. Countering their pincer movement are the French and the Germans, with Russian support, whose proposal to slow the drive to war is championed with equal zeal.

Old-style diplomacy (often conducted in French, the language of the art of international relations) used to be carried out formally by laboriously drafted letters, long-arranged meetings and time-consuming visits. Today the cut and thrust comes without frills. Grand embassies and senior diplomats are frequently bypassed, and more often than not a curt phone call from a world leader is considered enough to get the argument across.

Britain took the offensive at the weekend when Tony Blair held a war telephone conference call with his allies President Bush, José María Aznar, Prime Minister of Spain, and Silvio Berlusconi, Prime Minister of Italy, to agree on tactics.

His first targets on Sunday were fellow members of the Security Council, President Putin of Russia, President Fox of Mexico and President Lagos of Chile. He then handed the baton to Jack Straw, Foreign Secretary, who made the case to his 15 EU counterparts in Brussels yesterday, after co- ordinating with Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State. Mr Straw will press home the argument today when he hosts lunch for Joschka Fischer, the German Foreign Minister.

Britain is also conducting some more old-fashioned diplomacy. Baroness Amos, the Foreign Office Minister responsible for Africa, left last night on a hastily arranged trip to Guinea, Cameroon and Angola, the three African nations on the UN Security Council. Guinea, which becomes chairman of the Council on Saturday, has a reputation as “strongly anti-French”.

The Americans, too, are using their considerable power of persuasion. Mr Powell was in Beijing over the weekend and yesterday John Bolton, the US Under-Secretary of State, held talks in Moscow. Today Mr Bush hosts Simeone Saxe-Coburg, Prime Minister of Bulgaria, whose country’s support for the Anglo-American position in the Security Council is all but guaranteed.

But the French are undaunted. Fresh from winning African support to his cause last week, President Chirac met Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor, last night in Berlin to co-ordinate their counter-offensive. Today he will see Señor Aznar in Paris to persuade him to soften Spain’s stance.

The French position received the backing of the 116 leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement in Kuala Lumpur, although as anyone involved in diplomacy knows, public positions and private agreements are often contradictory.

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