BAGHDAD/UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Chief U.N. arms inspectors were to brief the Security Council on inconsistencies in Iraq's weapons declaration on Thursday, but Baghdad said inspections so far had shown it had told the truth.

France called on the United States, Britain and others to give the inspectors intelligence on where to find weapons of mass destruction that Washington insists Iraq is hiding.

Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said he had written to all the other 14 U.N. Security Council members to provide ``all means'' and ``all information'' to the inspectors.

Secretary of State Colin Powell said Washington was sharing intelligence with U.N. arms experts but had withheld some of its most sensitive information, waiting to see if inspectors ``are able to handle it and exploit it.''

Iraq's al-Thawra newspaper, the organ of President Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, said the intelligence did not exist, and accused Washington and London of forming an ``axis of deception.''

Chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency responsible for nuclear arms inspectors, will update the council on their evaluation of Iraq's 12,000-page weapons declaration as well as Baghdad's cooperation with the inspection teams.

The inspections are based on a November U.N. resolution which threatened the oil-rich state with ``serious consequences'' if it failed to cooperate. The arms experts have not declared any evidence of banned weapons after seven weeks of searches.

NUMEROUS GAPS

No new significant data has arrived from Iraq since the two officials gave a preliminary assessment of the declaration on December 19. At that time, Blix set out numerous gaps in information on chemical and biological arms.

Expectations that the experts will again tell the Security Council that key questions remain unanswered, offering Washington fresh ammunition for war, pushed up oil prices.

Blix is expected to give more details on the Iraqi declaration, including comments on a new document Iraq submitted that was snatched from a U.N. inspector at Baghdad's Air Force headquarters in July 1998. This indicates Iraq had not accounted for 6,000 poison gas bombs.

In Iraq, Saddam's top scientific adviser said he expected the inspectors to find the declaration matched what they had seen on the ground.

``I expect that the interim assessment shows that Iraq is telling the truth and that there is no contradiction between the declaration and what was actually found on the ground during inspections...so far,'' Amir al-Saadi told reporters in Baghdad.

Witnesses said three U.N. helicopters carrying inspectors had to turn back to Baghdad on Thursday due to bad weather conditions over northwestern Iraq. Other experts drove to at least seven sites in central Iraq, Iraqi officials said.

In a television interview, Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan said the inspectors should ignore what he said was U.S. pressure to gather information about Iraq.

``We hope that they avoid and stop this...because we know that there is pressure and demand even for the type of questions (they ask) from the American administration,'' he said.

FULL ASSESSMENT

Blix and ElBaradei are scheduled to give their first full formal assessment of Iraqi compliance with U.N. disarmament demands on January 27, a deadline set by the Security Council.

``At that point, we will have to make some judgments as to what to do next...But it is not necessarily a D-day for decision-making,'' Powell told the Washington Post.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, in Indonesia to seek the support of the world's biggest Muslim nation, said there was still time for a peaceful end to the crisis, if Saddam played by the rules. French President Jacques Chirac reiterated France's view that war should only be turned to as a last resort.

``The use of force is always an acknowledgement of failure and the worst of solutions,'' he told reporters.

But the United States and Britain are continuing to build up a massive force in the Gulf. A Czech military official said Washington had asked for assistance in a possible war, especially from troops trained in countering chemical attacks.