A formal meeting of NATO ambassadors broke up after just 15 minutes today with diplomats saying there had been no progress in a dispute on Iraq.
Intensive diplomatic efforts have continued all day in Brussels to try to resolve the rift within NATO. The meeting of ambassadors was postponed twice today.
An emergency summit of EU leaders on the Iraq crisis will take place on Monday.
Greece, which holds the EU presidency, proposed the summit to its partners yesterday in an effort to bridge deep divisions within the 15-nation bloc over whether or not to support a US-led war in Iraq.
The Iraq crisis has drawn a wedge between members of both the EU and NATO.
Britain, Italy, Spain and others are strongly backing the US threat of military action while France, Germany and Belgium are leading calls for a diplomatic resolution.
The US has strongly criticised France, which along with Germany and Belgium, blocked plans to bolster Turkish defences ahead of any conflict, saying they would be diplomatically premature, and send the wrong signal.
Monday's summit will follow a specially convened meeting of EU foreign ministers.
Greece said it hoped the leaders would be able to find some common ground on tackling the crisis, despite such deep divisions.
UNSC majority wants more time - Germany
Meanwhile, there are reports from Germany that 11 of the UN Security Council's members think weapons inspections should be given more time.
A senior German government source is quoted as saying that only four countries, the US, Britain, Spain and Bulgaria, remain sceptical.
Iraq has described yesterday's NATO opposition to the US position by France, Germany and Belgium as a slap in the face of the US administration.
A newspaper, owned by Saddam Hussein's elder son, said the veto could be a prelude to another veto at the UN Security Council.
The US President, George W Bush, said the veto affected the alliance in a negative way.
US Congressman, Peter King, a Republican member of the House of Representatives International Relations Committee in Washington, said the NATO split had implications for the future of the alliance.
Call for talks on humanitarian implications
And the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called for a special meeting to discuss the humanitarian implications of any war.
UN planners have predicted that up to 9.5 million of Iraq's 22 million people could quickly need outside food to survive if a war got under way.
Meanwhile the US Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan, has said that uncertainties over a possible war with Iraq posed 'formidable barriers' to business spending and made it tough to gauge the US economy's health.
He made his comments in a speech prepared for delivery to the US Senate Banking Committee.
Murdoch supports US/UK stance
Rupert Murdoch, the owner of one of the world's biggest media organisations, has said he supports the stance taken by the United States and Britain on Iraq.
One of his companies, News International, publishes, among other titles, the Sunday Times, the News of the World and part owns the Sky television network.
Mr Murdoch said he believed US President George W Bush was acting morally and that the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, was courageous.
He said the greatest economic outcome of any US-led war against Iraq would be a cut in oil prices to $20 a barrel.
Mr Murdoch was born in Australia but has taken US citizenship to circumvent media ownership laws.
