"Token gestures are not acceptable," Bush told a nationwide TV audience at a news conference Thursday night. He said he had not decided whether to invade Iraq but that it was only a matter of days before a Security Council vote on the new resolution authorizing force. 

"We're calling for a vote," the president said, even if the United States doesn't have the votes to prevail. "It's time for people to show their cards and let people know where they stand in relation to Saddam." 

Powell met Thursday with five foreign ministers, including France's Dominique de Villepin, the driving force in the anti-war bloc on the council. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Powell discussed with them modifying the resolution to attract maximum support while retaining its core demand that Iraq disarm completely. And Bush was meeting Friday at the White House with the foreign minister of Qatar. 

In Mexico City, President Vicente Fox said he heard a new flexibility in the U.S. stance on Iraq during a telephone call with Bush on Thursday. Fox, whose government is on the council, called on "the other extreme" - presumably France and Germany - to try to reach a compromise solution. 

Fox's comments reflected Mexico's desire to avoid an open split with its major trading partner, the United States, and indicated that a compromise solution could win support from other Security Council countries who, like Mexico, won't back an openly pro-war resolution. 

Bush also spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has opposed the resolution, and they agreed to speak again. 

Democrats weighed in, with Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle saying in Washington that the administration had brought on an "extraordinary disintegration" of support from other nations by rushing toward war. 

And House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said the United States should hold off military action to allow more time for diplomacy, weapons inspections and "the leverage provided by the threat" of war. 

"I do not believe that going to war now is the best way to rid Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction," the California Democrat said in remarks prepared for delivery Friday to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. 

In an effort to turn the tide, Powell's closest allied supporter, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, was considering a slight modification of the U.S.-British-Spanish resolution that would give Iraq a little while longer to agree to disarm completely. 

But the tough stance of the resolution that Iraq has missed its last chance would remain, and that could mean continued, unyielding opposition from France, Germany and Russia, among others. 

On Friday, Powell set up meetings with four more foreign ministers and lunch with Kofi Annan, the U.N. secretary-general who has given cautious blessing to the inspection system as an effective way to disarm Iraq. 

The odds against Powell succeeding were long. Failure would confirm the view of Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that turning to the United Nations would only produce a stalemate and delay disarming Iraq. 

Powell prevailed in his advice to Bush, although the president questioned U.N. relevance as he kicked off the diplomatic campaign in a speech in September. 

In a similar vein, Bush said Thursday night that after 12 years of disarmament resolutions "the fundamental question facing the Security Council is whether its words mean anything." 

Through the months of trying to build a worldwide coalition against Iraq, Powell has been the administration's point man, cajoling and appealing to reluctant allies like France and Germany and laying out the U.S. case to the council with intelligence data that failed to persuade the skeptics. 

In the process, the United States and its allies have been split over Iraq to an extent unprecedented in the past half-century.