Syria has protested against the United Nations Security Council's decision to allow the United States and the four other permanent members early access to Iraq's declaration on its weapons programmes.

Mikhail Wehbe, Syria's ambassador to UN, said the decision not to give the dossier to the 10 other members immediately went against the resolution on Iraq unanimously agreed by the Council last month.

It's in contradiction to... every kind of logic in the Security Council

Mikhail Wehbe

The BBC's Greg Barrow at the UN says that the Syrian protest reflects the suspicion in some quarters that the US has used diplomatic and political pressure to get an early view.

The decision to privilege the US along with China, France, Russia and the UK came on Sunday, just hours after the physical report - all 12,000 pages of it - arrived at the UN in New York from Baghdad.

Colombia, which like Syria holds one of the Security Council's 10 rotating seats and which chairs the Council for the month of December, has denied that Washington applied pressure to get early access.

Colombia: Leave it to the experts

Colombia's UN ambassador, Alfonso Valdivieso, said the decision on early access to the report was taken only after extensive consultations with all the other Council members.

It was based, he said, on the premise that the five big nuclear powers were the only nations qualified to assess potential risks.

He added that the report might contain information which could lead to the proliferation of nuclear weaponry.

But Syria's ambassador said the decision went against the unity of the security Council.

"It's in contradiction to the political logic, to the procedural logic, to every kind of logic in the Security Council," he said.

Our correspondent says that Resolution 1441 on Iraqi disarmament explicitly states that the document should be handed to the Security Council as a whole, not just to a select few members.

Old divisions

UN weapons experts are now ploughing through the report - although officials say much of it has yet to be translated from Arabic, and the contents must be checked by inspectors on the ground.

But its very existence has already drawn mixed reactions from those members of the Security Council entitled to view it, revealing old divisions among the big powers.

The intention to comply... displayed by Baghdad creates good grounds for resolving the Iraqi problem

Yuri Fedotov Russian Deputy Foreign Minister

In Moscow, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Yuri Fedotov called on the United States to allow UN inspectors to test the Iraqi declaration.

His view was echoed by China, which urged UN inspectors to provide "a fair and objective judgement".

The US continues to insist it has evidence that Iraq does have weapons of mass destruction.

	Iraq's dossier Contains 12,000 pages in Arabic and English covering Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear capabilities. 2,100 page nuclear component being studied by IAEA in Vienna. Declaration being examined first by five nuclear powers on Security Council. See also: First failure? Resolution 1441

"There's scepticism and there's fear about Iraqi intentions and abilities," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said on Monday.

But, he added, the US reserved judgement about the report until it was "in a position to look at it thoroughly and completely".

UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw for his part said on Sunday that Saddam Hussein's previous disclosures had been "a pack of lies".

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan urged member states to give the inspectors a chance to make a proper evaluation of the document:

"They should be given the time and the space to do it and I hope all member states will do that."

Repeat trips

On Monday weapons inspectors resumed their searches of suspect sites in Iraq.

One team visited al-Tuweitha Nuclear Research Centre on Monday, 20 kilometres (12 miles) south of Baghdad, for the third time since the inspectors' return last month after a four-year absence.

The facility was the location of the Osirak reactor - bombed in 1981 by Israel.

Other experts again inspected a military complex near the town of Fallujah, 90 km (55 miles) northwest of Baghdad - which has been repeatedly investigated by the UN.