THE United Nations was preparing to evacuate arms inspectors and humanitarian workers from Iraq last night as the US rebuffed a final French effort to head off war.

Five of the eight UN helicopters used by inspectors in Baghdad flew across the border to Syria on their way to Cyprus after their insurer cancelled coverage.

The aircraft are US-made Bell212 helicopters that the inspectors have used since January to visit sites suspected of being involved in secret Iraqi projects to make and store weapons of mass destruction. They left because their Western insurer halted coverage, apparently because of the prospect of imminent conflict.

The inspectors’ other three helicopters are all Russian-made Mi8s and were to remain in the country for further weapons inspections, a statement by the National Monitoring Directorate, the official Iraqi liaison with the inspectors, said.

UN sources said that the inspectors were prepared to flee by land if they were not allowed to fly out and the UN was ready to implement an evacuation plan to get hundreds of “oil-for-food” staff out of the country within 48 hours.

As the US told journalists to “start leaving or making plans to leave”, Germany ordered its embassy in Baghdad to shut down and advised its citizens to get out of Iraq immediately.

The Australian Government would meet early this week to decide whether to commit its forces, John Howard, the Prime Minister, said late last night. The timing would depend on events at the UN over the next 24 hours, he said.

France mounted a last attempt to head off a war by calling for another meeting of Security Council foreign ministers tomorrow and offering to compromise on a 30-day time-frame for Iraq to disarm. Dominique de Villepin, the French Foreign Minister, said that France could agree to speeding up the pace of arms inspections, but it would not allow an automatic trigger to war. “France is prepared to compromise on the basis of a very tight timetable (for inspections), but not on an ultimatum and not on automatic recourse to force,” he said on French television.

But, in a series of tele- vision interviews, Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, appeared to reject the French proposal out of hand and said that he saw no reason for another meeting of Security Council foreign ministers because “the difference is so fundamental”.

General Powell said: “We have had timelines, we have had deadlines, we have had benchmarks. The problem is, Iraq is not complying. Iraq is playing the United Nations and playing some of our friends in the permanent membership of the Security Council like a fiddle.”

He repeated that the US believed that it already had the legal authority it needs for war under Resolution 1441, carried last November.

“Would I love to have seen others come to the same conclusion we did, that there is a total lack of compliance on the part of Saddam Hussein, that all we’re seeing is games? Of course,” General Powell said. “Would I have liked to have seen a second resolution because it would have helped our friends with some of their political difficulties? Yes. Do we need a second resolution? No.”

Diplomats at the UN said yesterday that the US would not be able to prevent the Security Council holding its fifth ministerial meeting of the emergency if the French, German and Russian ministers decided to attend.

The anti-war bloc could try to embarrass the “war party” of Britain, Spain and the US by putting a 30-day deadline to a vote in the Security Council. But diplomats doubted that it would attract the nine votes needed unless the deadline was automatic — something France has said that it opposes.

Seeking to prolong inspections, Iraq formally invited Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, the two chief weapons inspectors, to visit Baghdad “to discuss ways to speed up joint co-operation”. The inspectors gave no immediate response and were expected to seek the advice of the Security Council today.

Dr Blix dismissed suggestions that the invitation was a last-minute stunt by Baghdad. “I certainly wouldn’t use the word stunt,” he said. “We will have to give serious thought to what the answer will be.”

The chief inspectors are due to publish a proposed “work programme” today or tomorrow that has about a dozen “key remaining disarmament tasks” for Iraq.

Several members of the Security Council want to turn these tasks into “benchmarks” to test Iraqi compliance as inspections continue. But they have already rejected a British compromise that would give Iraq ten days to meet four of the tests as a “first instalment”.

• The Foreign Office has told the 3,000 Britons in Kuwait that war is imminent. Diplomats said that they expect their travel advice “to change sooner rather than later” and advised expatriates to make daily checks with the embassy.

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