Defiant Saddam vows to rout any US invasion

BAGHDAD - A defiant Saddam Hussein sought to stiffen Iraqis' resolve on the 12th anniversary of the 1991 Gulf War on Friday with a vow to rout US troops at the gates of Baghdad.

The Iraqi president said he had mobilised his army and drawn up a plan to counter any invasion by the tens of thousands of US soldiers, warplanes and ships now massing in the Gulf.

Saddam's speech, marking the anniversary of the start of the Gulf War that drove Iraqi troops out of Kuwait, came a day after UN inspectors in Iraq said they had found empty rocket warheads designed to carry chemical warfare agents.

The White House called the discovery of the undeclared warheads "troubling and serious" and clear evidence that Saddam was not disarming as required under a tough new UN resolution passed last November.

UN weapons chief Hans Blix took a softer line, saying the find was no "smoking gun", or key evidence that could trigger a US-led invasion. "This discovery is interesting... But it's not something that's so important because we're talking about empty warheads," he told a news conference in Paris.

Iraq says they were obsolete stock that had been forgotten.

Saddam made no mention of the discovery in his speech urging Iraqis to be alert for a US strike.

"Baghdad, its people and leadership, is determined to force the Mongols of our age to commit suicide at its gates," he said, referring to the Mongol armies who sacked Baghdad, then a centre of learning, in 1258.

As the US continued to build up its forces in the Gulf, French President Jacques Chirac said that any unilateral action against Iraq would break international law. He said it was up to the UN Security Council to decide on the inspectors' progress report, due to be presented on January 27.

But US Secretary of State Colin Powell told a German daily Washington believed that by the end of January there would be "a persuasive case" that Iraq was not cooperating with the inspectors.

Many countries believed a new UN resolution was needed to justify a war against Iraq, he said. "But we have always made clear that the US will act without a second resolution if we are of the firm opinion that Iraq still has weapons of mass destruction or wants to produce new ones," he told Sueddeutsche Zeitung in an interview issued before publication on Saturday.

"If you are looking for proof of weapons of mass destruction, I can show you pictures," Powell added, according to a Reuters re-translation of a German text of the interview.

Powell's remarks pushed up US crude oil futures prices to a two-year high of US$34 ($63) a barrel at the close on Friday.

Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the UN's nuclear watchdog, toured Paris and London to brief the two veto-wielding members of the UN Security Council on the arms inspectors' hunt for chemical, biological and ballistic weapons in Iraq.

Blix said he was not yet sure that Iraq had destroyed all its banned weapons. "There is not yet confidence...that all the chemical and biological weapons and missiles are gone and that all the equipment is gone," he said.

Blix later held an hour of talks near London with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who welcomed what he said was the accelerating pace of weapons inspections and called on Saddam to make the most of his chance to disarm.

His spokesman dismissed Saddam's anniversary speech and said what was far more important "is his silence, and absence of answers to perfectly legitimate questions" posed by the UN weapons inspectors.

Blix and ElBaradei have said they will confront Iraqi officials in talks in Baghdad on Sunday and Monday with big gaps in the 12,000-page weapons declaration Iraq submitted to the United Nations on December 7.

ElBaradei said Baghdad had to be proactive in showing it had no weapons of mass destruction. "That is the clear message we are sending to Baghdad next week: co-operate and there is a positive outcome for you, and if you do not, unfortunately the consequences will not be very pleasant."

Weapons experts said the 122mm rocket casings the inspectors found in ammunition bunkers were from a multiple-barrelled rocket launcher system, a battlefield artillery weapon that could not be considered a weapon of mass destruction.

"It would make no sense to hide them in a place...where the inspectors are sure to look. For once the Iraqis are probably telling the truth," Charles Heyman, editor of Jane's World Armies, told Reuters.

On the diplomatic front, US defence officials said they were closer to agreement with Ankara on deploying US troops in Turkey for a possible war in Iraq. Turkey's president earlier said his country could only make a limited contribution to any such war.

In neighbouring Syria, Saddam's special envoy began a regional tour with talks with President Bashar al-Assad.

Arab officials said reports floated in the media and diplomatic circles that Saddam might step down were part of a US-led campaign of psychological warfare to undermine Saddam's will to fight and encourge a coup d'etat against him.

Thousands of anti-war protesters took to the streets in Cairo, Bahrain and Gaza City, and a senior member of the militant Islamic group Hamas said Muslims and Arabs would attack US targets everywhere if America went to war against Iraq.

- REUTERS

Herald feature: Iraq