It now appears inevitable that the United States and its allies will go to war against Iraq.

Not since the end of the Cold War has a debate like the one on Iraq divided the world to such a degree, pitting ally against ally and friend against friend.

Not only is the future of Iraq at stake, but the status of the United Nations and the Atlantic Alliance hang in the balance.

Few dispute that Saddam Hussein is a dangerous man whose treatment of his own people, not to mention his neighbours, is abhorrent. Few would disagree that Iraq under his leadership is an ongoing threat to stability in the Middle East and the rest of the world.

The world would be a better and safer place if it could be determined with absolute certainty that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction - and had a different leader at its helm.

In an eloquent and powerful speech to the House of Commons yesterday, British Prime Minister Tony Blair underpinned the case for taking action with the undeniable fact that the world has allowed Iraq under Saddam Hussein to lie and ignore the UN for 12 years. Is the fact that he has been allowed to do so for so long good reason to allow him to continue?

It is also inarguable that the only reason that the UN inspectors have made any progress at all in recent months is because they have had the threat of force available on Iraq's doorstep.

As soon as the threat recedes, can anyone doubt that Iraq will return to its old games and that the world will at some point be threatened again?

And yet, the fact remains that many people outside the White House and No. 10 Downing Street remain unconvinced that Iraq either possesses weapons of mass destruction or, more importantly, that there is a clear and present danger that they will be used.

The Bush Administration has done little to help its cause. Through arrogance or sheer carelessness, they have driven away potential allies, and the continual shifting from the claim that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction to the claim that it has links with al-Qaeda to the moral case for regime change has left people not convinced but confused. Then too, the US failure to pay anything more than lip service to resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict will haunt them long after this war is over.

The ineptitude of US diplomacy has only been surpassed by the cavalier behaviour of France, which in refusing to entertain any form of ultimatum backed by force wrecked the last hope that this dispute could be resolved peacefully.

"It was for the UN to pass a second resolution setting out benchmarks for compliance; with an ultimatum that if they were ignored, action would follow," Mr. Blair said yesterday. "The tragedy is that had such a resolution issued, he might just have complied. Because the only route to peace with someone like Saddam Hussein is diplomacy backed by force."

Had it been possible to give the inspectors more time, they may have been able to determine once and for all if Iraq has stocks of biological or chemical weapons.

This would at least have given proof of possession to those who demanded it.

Much has been made in recent weeks of the parallels between this episode and the failure of the Western democracies to stop Hitler in the 1930s.

But there is another parallel, and that is with 1914, when the mobilisation plans of the European powers took on lives of their own, plunging the world into more than four years of brutal slaughter.

If that war was inevitable, the failure of the UN to back words with action has made this war, which was always likely, inescapable.

Mr. Blair was tragically right when he said: "To retreat now, I believe, would put at hazard all that we hold dearest, turn the UN back into a talking shop, stifle the first steps of progress in the Middle East, leave the Iraqi people to the mercy of events on which we would have relinquished all power to influence for the better."

Now, it seems, there is little choice except to find out if Iraq does indeed have weapons of mass destruction by way of force, without UN backing, and the proof may come on the battlefield against US and British troops.

It can only be hoped that it will indeed be a quick war. History will judge if it is a just war.