UN inspectors search more sites in Iraq

UN arms inspectors searched more sites in Iraq yesterday as President George W. Bush, overseeing a military build-up in the Gulf, rallied troops at the largest US Army base and told cheering soldiers a war against Iraq would be a liberation not a conquest.

Bush addressed thousands of cheering soldiers at the biggest army base in the United States, Fort Hood in his home state of Texas.

"Should Saddam seal his fate by refusing to disarm, by ignoring the opinion of the world, you'll be fighting not to conquer anybody but to liberate people," he told them.

A state-run Iraqi newspaper described Bush as "the master of evil-doers", a day after the US president said there was scant evidence Iraqi President Saddam Hussein would avoid war by abandoning weapons of mass destruction voluntarily.

Hundreds of protesters joined a march in the pro-Western Gulf state of Bahrain to protest against the threatened attack on Iraq and what one banner in Islamabad called the "Holocaust of the Muslims".

In Iraq, the UN inspectors continued their hunt for evidence of chemical, biological and nuclear arms yesterday, a Muslim day of rest.

Missile experts visited a state company involved in the manufacture of mechanical parts for rockets 60 kilometres southeast of the capital Baghdad, Iraqi officials said.

The officials said a chemicals team inspected al Basil Company in al Nahrawan. The facility consists of several pilot plants involved in the production of chemicals.

A UN Monitoring, Inspection and Verification Commission (UNMOVIC) team went to Ramadi, 110 kilometres west of Baghdad, and biological experts left for Basra, 550 kilometres south of Baghdad. It was not clear what sites they would visit there.

Over 100 inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency and UNMOVIC are trying to assess what Iraq's military industries have been doing since inspectors left in 1998.

The UN Security Council passed a resolution in November demanding Iraq give a full account of its weapons programmes and cooperate with weapons inspectors, as required by resolutions stemming from the 1991 Gulf War, or face tough consequences.

Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz accused Washington on Thursday of "an imperialist design" to invade his oil-rich country regardless of the verdict of the inspectors, who must report their findings to the Security Council by January 27.

Bush, visited Fort Hood base in his home state of Texas and said he had still not made a decision to attack Iraq.

But his cancellation of a January trip to Africa and troop preparations have prompted many military analysts to predict he will order military action.

Early orders for troop deployments from the United States have apparently not involved Fort Hood, the largest domestic US Army base and home to about 40,000 soldiers.

Iraqi daily Al-Iraq questioned the sincerity of a New Year's Eve statement by Bush that he still hoped the standoff with Baghdad could be resolved peacefully.

"Bush remains the first evil-doer or the master of evil-doers on earth," Al-Iraq said in a front-page editorial.

It said he had talked about a peaceful solution only to defuse rising global public anger: "(The) truth of the matter is that Bush wanted... to cool down the climate after the rise of temperature of global public anger over his threats and preparations for aggression against Iraq."

On the diplomatic front, Iran denied Germany's foreign minister told his Iranian counterpart Washington sought to overthrow the Iraqi government by a bloodless coup.

The Iranian newspaper Entekhab reported on Thursday that Germany's Joschka Fischer had told Kamal Kharrazi by telephone that the United States was set to overthrow Saddam without a "war, bloodshed and heavy military expenditure".