HANOVER, Germany -- German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder warned Saturday against launching a strike against Iraq without considering the consequences for the entire Middle East region. Schroeder, speaking at an election campaign meeting in the German city of Hanover, said he was warning against conducting such an operation "without thinking of the consequences, the political repercussions for the entire Middle East."

"Whoever gets himself involved in that should know what he is getting involved in and what he wants to do there," said Schroeder, who is trailing in opinion polls as Germany heads towards a general election in September.

The United States has made clear its aim of toppling Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, accusing him of building up weapons of mass destruction and declaring Baghdad part of an "axis of evil" with Iran and North Korea.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell on Saturday emphatically rejected an Iraqi offer to discuss a return of UN weapons inspectors who fled in December 1998 on the eve of the last massive U.S.-British airstrikes on Baghdad.

Schroeder's conservative rival for the chancellorship, Edmund Stoiber, refused to be drawn on whether he would back a possible U.S. attack against Iraq, saying it was a "hypothetical question", while calling for the return of the UN inspectors.

"We have to know: What sort of criminal weapons does Iraq, Saddam Hussein possess -- biological, atomic, bacteriological? To that we need inspectors in the country," he told German television Deutsche Welle.

The United Nations will not lift crippling sanctions imposed on Baghdad after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait until arms inspectors certify that Iraq does not have program to build weapons of mass destruction.