TONY BLAIR arrived in Moscow last night on a mission to buy off the threat of Russia’s vetoing a new United Nations resolution on Iraq.

Speaking before talks with President Putin, the Prime Minister said he was optimistic that he could secure Russia’s agreement to an “ultimatum” demanding that President Saddam Hussein of Iraq surrender his weapons of mass destruction.

Although he said “it was not a question of a price tag”, Mr Blair suggested that his visit would help to clear the path towards a fresh UN mandate on weapons inspections by assuaging Russia’s concern over its huge oil interest in Iraq, the real goals of US foreign policy and Mr Putin’s right to crush Chechen terrorism.

Mr Blair landed in Moscow amid snow flurries, and then travelled 80 miles north to Mr Putin’s country dacha for dinner.

Speaking on his aircraft, the Prime Minister said there was growing agreement across Europe that Iraq had to be dealt with by effective UN-sponsored action. “I believe we can get everyone on the same page. I think there is a way of getting the international community together,” he said. But he emphasised that if a new resolution was flouted, military action must follow or “the UN would sink into the morass and disappear”.

Aides said Mr Blair and Mr Putin were unlikely to agree on the exact wording of a new resolution during this 24-hour visit, but hoped that the talks would smooth negotiations among the UN Security Council’s five permanent members. Mr Putin feels that he has received scant compensation for his co-operation with the West, in particular for backing the US-led war in Afghanistan and admitting the American military to the former Soviet republics of Central Asia.

President Bush has since done little to fulfil his promise to help to remove the Jackson-Vanik amendment, a punitive trade sanction that was imposed on the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Mr Putin also faces serious political problems over Iraq because Russian businessmen have made hundreds of millions of pounds in recent years through lucrative oil deals with Saddam’s regime.

Mr Blair said he recognised that Russia had legitimate concerns about its economic and commercial interests in Iraq, which include loans worth around $10 billion (£6.6 billion). Mr Putin is expected to seek assurances that Russia’s outstanding business contracts with Iraq will be honoured by any successor government in Baghdad.

Mr Blair also sought to ease Russian fears that America’s real objective was to give US companies access to Iraq’s oil fields. Mr Putin is understood to want guarantees that a new Iraqi government would not flood the international oil market, depressing the price of Russia’s own oil exports.

“If oil was our concern, then there are a thousand easier ways to do this — we would be doing a deal with Saddam,” Mr Blair said.

Backing Mr Putin’s war in Chechnya will be more problematic for Mr Blair. America’s Human Rights Watch organisation urged him yesterday to take a tough line with Mr Putin over his treatment of Chechen rebels, saying that Russia’s abuses could not be ignored in return for its support on Iraq.

Mr Blair said that he would once again raise the question of human rights, but Russia was entitled to protect its territory and take measures to counter terrorism. “I have always been perhaps more understanding than others about the problems President Putin faces on this,” he said.

As Mr Blair landed, a bomb ripped through a police station in the capital of Chechnya, Grozny, killing at least 13 people and injuring 12.

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