U.K. foreign minister warns U.N. to act on Iraq

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw

UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- "No country presents as fundamental a challenge to the United Nations as Iraq," U.K. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told the United Nations General Assembly on Saturday.

Calling U.S. President George W. Bush's speech to the U.N. on Thursday "powerful," Straw said the international body must act immediately to ensure Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has no weapons of mass destruction.

"If we fail to deal with this challenge, the United Nations itself will seriously be weakened," Straw said. "And that would make the world a much more dangerous place."

Alongside terrorism, Straw said, "the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction poses the greatest current threat to global security."

Straw said for three decades the United Nations has ensured that all states complied with Security Council resolutions regarding weapons of mass destruction "with one infamous exception... That exception is Iraq. For two decades Saddam Hussein's regime has defied and frustrated every attempt to enforce the international rule of law."

Hussein has "persistently mocked the authority of the United Nations," Straw said. "No country has ever deceived every other country in the world as systematically and as cynically as Iraq."

Straw said the U.N. must require Iraq to readmit weapons inspectors "with unfettered access" and must be resolute in the face of Iraq's defiance to "secure the will of the United Nations."

Although Straw did not explicitly mention military action against Iraq in his address, he told BBC Radio on Friday that "if the weapons inspectors are not allowed back, then the will of the U.N. has to be enforced by other means which inevitably would mean military action."