President Bush called President Jacques Chirac of France Friday to lobby for the American measure. Marc Grossman, the under secretary of state for political affairs, and Britain's Foreign Office political director, Peter Ricketts, flew to Paris to seek French support.

But Mr. Chirac stuck to his position that the initial Security Council resolution should deal with inspections and that the issue of military action should be deferred.

Indeed, the French appeared to be mounting a lobbying effort of their own to counter the Americans. Mr. Chirac met Thursday with the Chinese premier, Zhu Rongji, who is visiting Europe to speak with business leaders. Later Thursday, Mr. Chirac called President Vladimir V. Putin to lobby for Russian support.

Mr. Zhu was shown on French television saying that "if the weapons inspections did not take place, if we do not have clear proof and if we do not have the authorization of the Security Council, we cannot launch a military attack on Iraq? otherwise, there would be incalculable consequences."

Mr. Grossman and Mr. Ricketts arrived in Moscow on Saturday to try to secure Russia's backing. But Russia's foreign minister, Igor S. Ivanov,sharply reiterated Russian opposition to the use of force in Iraq and said Russia still favors return of UN weapons inspectors to Iraq after the talk with two American envoys.His words echoed those of Mr. Putin, who on Thursday called for a diplomatic solution on the basis of existing Security Council resolutions.

"As for the Russian position, we have repeatedly emphasized that we stand for complete and strict compliance with all existing resolutions of the UN Security Council on Iraq. We attach particular significance to the earliest possible return to Iraq of UN international inspectors, who are to answer whether there are weapons of mass destruction there or not," Ivanov said.

Ivanov on Friday said that Moscow had received no clear and irrefutable evidence that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction. But in the meantime, he warned that any delay in the return of international inspectors to Iraq would be an unforgivable mistake.

The resolution drafted by the United States in conjunction with Britain has not been made public. But allied and American officials said the draft resolution outlined a detailed and stringent inspection plan in three and a half single-space typed pages.

According to the officials familiar with the document, the draft resolution asserts in its initial paragraph that Iraq is already guilty of a "material breach" of past United Nations resolutions because of its work on weapons of mass destruction and its effort to frustrate the work of inspectors, among other issues. Inspectors were last in Iraq in late 1998, when they were withdrawn prior to an American and British bombing campaign to punish Iraq for past violations.

(Edited by Zheng Guihong for china.org.cn September 29, 2002)