The United Nations is embroiled in perhaps its most critical debate yet over how to deal with Iraq. And there's more uncertainty than ever over just how the United Nations will ultimately handle Baghdad's latest challenge to both the weapons inspections and sanctions which have been imposed on it.

Against this background of uncertainty, the public wrangling over how to proceed has - amongst other things - offered an insight into how the different arms of the United Nations charged with dealing with Iraq have been at variance.

The former weapons inspector Scott Ritter resigned last month out of frustration that the inspectors weren't - in his view - getting enough political support. Now the Washington Post is reporting that he told US intelligence in 1996 of evidence from Iraqi defectors that Iraq was hiding up to four nuclear devices which lacked only uranium cores. It also reports that US intelligence found the evidence credible but couldn't corroborate it.

But the man who has just resigned as co-ordinator of UN humanitarian efforts in Iraq, Denis Halliday, has now openly questioned the sanctions which are being used as a way of trying to get Iraq to comply with the UN's disarmament demands. In an interview with the Reuters news agency, he called them "futile", arguing that they harmed ordinary people but probably actually strengthened the Iraqi leadership.

The Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister, Tariq Aziz, is in New York for talks on how to end the latest stalemate - in which Iraq is blocking new weapons inspections, and threatening to end all co-operation with the inspectors. As the political manoeuvring continues in New York, there's new controversy over reported contacts between the weapons inspectors and Israeli intelligence, and over new tests in France and Switzerland to detect the deadly VX nerve agent on Iraqi missile parts, which have reportedly proved negative.

It's perhaps not surprising that, seven years after the Gulf conflict, the international consensus on Iraq has been fraying. The big powers all say Iraq should fulfil its UN obligations. But, for different reasons, they differ over what that means, how much credit Baghdad should receive for the disarmament it has already carried out, and how seriously to take the inspectors' continuing suspicions that it's hiding something.