United Nations: Key states piled pressure on Iraq to comply with UN demands that it disarm, but differences persisted over the use of arms to enforce Security Council resolutions.

In the most muscular expression of support so far for US President George W Bush, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told the UN General Assembly, "We have to be clear to Iraq and to ourselves about the consequences which will flow from a failure by Iraq to met its obligations."

In a television interview to be broadcast in Britain, Straw went further, saying the United Nations must warn Iraqi President Saddam Hussein that his regime "will have to end" if he fails to remove his weapons of mass destruction.

But Straw's German counterpart, Joschka Fischer, told the Assembly that Germany rejected any automatic threat of military force against Iraq.

Fischer agreed that Saddam's regime was "a brutal dictatorship" that must be denied weapons of mass destruction.

"The United Nations has to not only maintain the pressure on the Iraqi government but also to intensify it," he said. "We do not want, however, any automatism leading to the use of military force."

In Belgrade, news agency Tanjug quoted Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica as saying that, "All multilateral action, non-violent, based on negotiations and the law, is better than its opposite."

At the Assembly, New Zealand's Foreign Minister Phil Goff acknowledged that Iraq was a threat to world peace but said, "We must look for solutions which will resolve and not exacerbate the threat."