PRESIDENT BUSH faces growing domestic opposition to a war against Iraq even as he struggles to convince European allies at the United Nations that an invasion is now justified.

Seven out of ten Americans would give UN weapons inspectors months more to search for arms inside Iraq, according to yesterday’s Washington Post.

It is the latest in a number of recent polls that consistently paint a picture of an American public deeply concerned that the case for war has not been made convincingly.

A Newsweek poll on Sunday revealed that 81 per cent of Americans support war only with the full backing of the UN Security Council, while 60 per cent believe that more time is needed for weapons inspections.

It is a worrying domestic trend for Mr Bush as he prepares to devote a significant part of his State of the Union address on Tuesday to explaining why he believes that President Saddam Hussein must be removed from power.

Despite Mr Bush’s assertion that the Iraqi leader has no intention of disarming and is “playing games” with the UN, which he repeated yesterday in a speech in Missouri, 43 per cent of Americans said that inspectors should be given as much time as they want to scour Iraq.

A quarter said that the inspectors should have “a few months” or more. Another quarter supported a deadline of a few weeks or less for the conclusion of inspections.

Perhaps more worrying for Mr Bush, the poll found that in barely a month, his performance rating on Iraq has dropped 16 percentage points, to 42 per cent, among 18 to 30-year-olds, and from 58 per cent to 50 per cent among the population as a whole.

War of words

Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, aimed a new wave of psychological warfare at Iraq yesterday (Elaine Monaghan writes).

He said that his weekly press briefing with General Richard Myers, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was being broadcast to Iraqi radios from American psychological warfare aircraft. “To all Iraqis who are listening today, I say that this is democracy in action,” he said. “Contrary to what Saddam Hussein told the Iraqi people, America is not the enemy. Our goal is peace not war.”

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