Saddam 'to give UN team chance to disprove US charges'

President Saddam Hussein said yesterday he was ready to give UN weapons inspectors a chance to disprove American allegations that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction.

But Washington, which has threatened to go to war unless Iraq can prove it has renounced biological, chemical and nuclear arms programmes, insisted it had intelligence information to back its contention.

No inspections were taking place yesterday or today because of the Muslim Eid al-Fitr holiday, but all eyes were on Sunday's deadline for Iraq to come clean about its programmes.

Iraq insists that, since it has no such programmes, it will merely be listing "dual use technology" that has peaceful as well as military applications.

"Some might claim we didn't give them (the inspectors) the proper chance to disprove the American allegations that Iraq produced weapons of mass destruction during the period of the inspectors' absence," Saddam said in remarks broadcast on Iraqi television, his first comment on the inspections since they resumed last week.

"For that reason we shall provide them with such a chance, after which, if the weaklings remain weak and the cowardly remain cowards, then we shall take the stand that befits our people, principles and mission," he told the Iraqi leadership as he congratulated them on Eid al-Fitr.

The inspectors have reported nothing but cooperation from Iraq in their visits to 20 suspect sites since November 27. So far, they have found nothing untoward, although many of the samples they have taken have yet to be tested.

But White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters: "The president of the United States and the secretary of defence would not assert as plainly and bluntly as they have that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction if it was not true, and if they did not have a solid basis for saying it."

The White House has already said it is not convinced that the current method of inspection can find hidden weapons, and has urged chief UN inspector Hans Blix - in vain - to adopt a more aggressive approach.

At the same time Iraqi officials have shown the first signs of irritation with the inspections.

In an address in Baghdad on Wednesday, Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan accused the inspectors of spying for the United States and Israel and helping Washington prepare for war.

Britain's BBC radio quoted him as saying after his address that independent monitors should observe the inspectors' work.

And Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz told ABC's "Nightline" in the United States on Wednesday: "The whole issue of weapons of mass destruction is a hoax. When they find that there are no weapons of mass destruction, they would use another pretext to attack."

A first test comes this weekend, when the United Nations receives Iraq's dossier, likely to be thousands of pages long and to require 10 days to analyse.

Hussam Mohammed Amin, head of the Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate, said on Wednesday that the new elements in the dossier would consist only of "dual-use" technology - something that is unlikely to satisfy the United States.

However, Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a leading Bush administration hawk on Iraq, on Wednesday dismissed any suggestion that the declaration might in itself trigger a US decision on military action.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told reporters: "He (Saddam) may declare that it (Iraq) has no holdings of WMD; or he may fill the declaration with meaningless detail designed to put the inspectors off the scent.

"While this weekend will not be the moment to declare Iraq either in breach or in compliance, a false declaration would make clear to the world that Saddam's strategy is deceit. We will not allow him to get away with it."

One diplomat at the Security Council said the significance of the file was that it set a baseline for judging violations.

"After the declaration has come in, anything that is found shows that Saddam Hussein meant to deceive," he said.

In the latest indication of US preparations for war, Wolfowitz went to Nato headquarters in Brussels to propose a support role for the alliance in the event of a war, possibly including providing forces and post-conflict peacekeeping.

The New York Times said the Pentagon planned to mobilise thousands of National Guard and Reserve troops shortly to fill military jobs in the event of a conflict.

The aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman and its battle group were due to depart yesterday with warplanes and missiles that could be part of an opening salvo in any US-led attack.

And in Tokyo, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi defended a decision to send a destroyer with a state-of-the-art missile detection system to the Indian Ocean, a move many see as tacit backing for a possible US attack on Iraq.

The governments of France and Germany, like that of Japan, face public scepticism about the need for a war in Iraq, casting doubt on their ability to endorse any Nato involvement.

After the talks in Brussels, one diplomat said Wolfowitz had shown "a clear willingness not to rush Nato into things", adding "The US knows that major partners like France and Germany cannot go further than what was agreed in the United Nations."

In the Gulf region itself, the official Kuwaiti news agency said Kuwait's navy had stopped an Iraqi tugboat yesterday after it entered Kuwaiti waters, and arrested its crew.