The meeting was convened amid growing U.S. frustration that Iraq is clearly not disarming and as the momentum for war is gathering pace in the region.

Diplomats in Istanbul expected the ministers come out with a declaration urging a peaceful end to the Iraq standoff and demand Iraq to fulfil United Nations resolutions and declare that it will not develop weapons of mass destruction in the future.

Before the talks even started in a former Ottoman palace overlooking the Bosporus, diplomats from participating countries played down hopes of a breakthrough.

In Tehran, a newspaper close to the Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i had cautioned against on utility of the meeting, observing that three of the six participating countries, namely Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia were allies of Washington and also questioned the presence of Egypt, which has no borders with Iraq.

The meeting in Istanbul is designed to issue a "strong, sincere and clear" message to Baghdad to convince the international community and especially the regional states that it has no antagonistic designs and has no weapons of mass destruction to use against them, the English-language Turkish Daily News (TDN) quoted a Turkish official source.

The paper further said that it was told that some regional countries, including Syria and Iran, have been asking for the inclusion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the meeting agenda, while others would demand that the message to Baghdad should also be coupled with a warning to Washington.

"We want to avoid war... that is why we are coming together", Turkish Prime Minister Abdollah Gul said in an interview on the Fox News channel. "We want to warn Iraq, this is not a joke", he added.

Gul described the gathering of Iraq's neighbours as a "last ditch effort" to prevent armed conflict, saying they intended to tell Iraqi leader Saddam Hoseyn that time is running out and that this is no time for rhetoric or games.

In an interview with the TDN, Turkish Foreign Minister Yasar Yakis said he did not agree with the assumption that there will definitely be a war. "Peace could still be salvaged. War could still be prevented", he said, calling on Baghdad to be "more cooperative" with UN arms inspectors

"The focus should be on finding a peaceful solution which would spare us a great deal", he told a news conference in Riyadh, on his departure for Istanbul.

He argued that the sole aim behind this diplomatic activity was to reach a unified stance about some "points that seem simple" in the face of "those who never stop preaching for war.

To a question on whether ministers would discuss the possibility of asking the Iraqi dictator to step down as a means of averting war, the Syrian Foreign Affairs Minister Farooq Shara’a said: "Regimes can only be changed by their people not by an external force. Otherwise, the code of the jungle will prevail".

As the ministers started their consultations, Iraq urged Turkey to reject U.S. requests for military support in any attack on Baghdad, a possibility opposed by a great majority of nations, including the European Union, except for Britain.

"We believe the only way a war might be avoided is for Iraq to fully and unconditionally comply and if it doesn't we all fear the worst", Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan al-Muashar told Reuters. "We are sending a strong signal to Baghdad that this is about the region, not just about Iraq.

However, some analysts say the regional states may not have the political influence to offer viable alternatives to war.

"Taking into consideration recent remarks from both sides, I have serious doubts that Bush and Saddam will take this summit seriously. For example, Saddam recently pledged to offer UN monitors more help in their search for evidence of weapons of mass destruction and accepted a 10-point statement issued after UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix’s visit to Iraq last weekend. However, the US has zero trust in Saddam. The world has seen how determined the Bush administration is to attack Iraq", commented Sami Kohen, the veteran Turkish analyst in "Millyet" daily.

"Reports of supposed Russian efforts to avoid war by persuading Saddam it was time to go were the work of publications trying to cast a shadow on Russian diplomacy", Igor Ivanov told "Trud" daily, adding that such an action would constitute an intervention in Iraq's internal affairs.

But Iraqi officials said Saddam would never accept the proposal, even if he is assured that he would not face persecution and prosecution.

But he confirmed that Russia was in contact with Iraqi officials. "We are not stopping contacts with Baghdad in order to know more about the mood and thoughts of the Iraqi leadership", Ivanov said, noting that there was not enough evidence from U.N. weapons inspections in Iraq to justify military intervention.

Speaking in Athens, which chairs the European Union’s presidency, for a two-day meeting with the EU to discuss ways of averting possible U.S.-led military intervention in Iraq, he said, "There is still political and diplomatic leeway to resolve the Iraq issue".

"The efforts of the international community must be directed now at helping international inspectors perform their mission. This is the direction we intend to pursue, among others, along with the European Union".

Seeking to calm down the degrading atmosphere in relations between the allies, French President Jacques Chirac said Thursday in Berlin, where he took part in the ceremonies marking four decades of the France-Germany Declaration of Friendship, that one has to "sit down and ponder the differences of views in a quiet mood".