MOSCOW -- Russia warned the United States on Wednesday against taking the law into its own hands over Iraq, saying Washington would be breaking international law if it went ahead with strikes without UN approval.

As Iraqi President Saddam Hussein pondered whether to accept UN Security Council Resolution 1441 ordering Baghdad to fully disarm, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Yury Fedotov stressed that Washington would be breaking international law if it took military action without first seeking UN approval. "I hope that in future they will not violate international law," Fedotov told reporters, referring to U.S. bombing raids on Iraq in December 1998 which he described as "a clear violation of international law."

Those attacks "began during a UN debate on the Butler weapons inspections report," Fedotov said, referring to the then chief UN weapons inspector Richard Butler.

After a stand-off between the weapons inspectors and Iraqi officials in December 1998, Butler withdrew his inspectors and the United States and Britain bombed suspected weapons sites and other Iraqi military targets.

No weapons inspections have been carried out in Iraq since then.

Saddam last month agreed to allow the weapons inspectors to return to Iraq under pressure from the United States, which has proposed military action to ensure Baghdad fully renounces a program to acquire weapons of mass destruction.

Iraq's Parliament on Tuesday rejected the UN resolution on disarmament, which was adopted by a unanimous vote by the 15 members of the Security Council last week.

Russia, which has strong economic interests in Iraq, and France fought furiously to make sure that the UN resolution did not include an automatic threat of the use of force should Saddam's regime come in conflict with weapons inspectors.

Fedotov, Moscow's chief negotiator in the United Nations, said Russia was satisfied with the new draft's wording, even though he conceded that it has put added pressures on Saddam that did not exist in previous resolutions.

"I hope that the Iraqi leadership weighs the pros and cons and takes a decision that everyone expects from it," Fedotov said.

He said the new resolution "does not stray far" from previous ones, while admitting that Russia now accepted that Saddam must open up his eight vast presidential palaces to inspectors, a demand that did not exist in previous drafts.

"It would be unrealistic for the Iraqi leadership to expect amendments (that soften) this resolution," said Fedotov when asked if Iraq was stalling for time through its Parliament's negative recommendation issued Tuesday.

"The language of the resolution is very firm," he said, "and the emotions in Iraq are understandable. At the same time we hope that Iraq adopts a pragmatic approach,' he said.