Families stock up with food as Iraq prepares for war

WITH almost 200,000 US and British troops massed around it, the government of Saddam Hussein prepared Iraqis for war yesterday, equipping families with extra food and inviting citizens to help “inflict defeat on the evil aggressors.”

Saddam, top aides and military commanders discussed "the preparations of our courageous armed forces and of the Iraqi people to confront the US threats of aggression," the Iraqi News Agency reported.

"They also discussed ways to enhance Iraqis' capabilities and steadfastness, in a way that provides all Iraqis with the chance to gain the honour of defending Iraq ... and enabling them to inflict defeat on the evil aggressors," according to the reports.

About 150,000 US troops and more than 40,000 British troops are in the region, most either in Kuwaiti desert camps just south of the Iraqi border, on aircraft carriers or on air bases nearby.

For the sixth straight month, Iraqis picked up double rations yesterday, part of an expanded rations system designed to prepare citizens for a long war. Iraq has been handing out food rations to its people since 1990, when the United Nations imposed sanctions on the oil-rich country for its occupation of neighbouring Kuwait.

At a Baghdad grocery store, women in black chadors bought flour, milk powder, cooking fat and other basic food items at below-market prices, loading canvas sacks onto wheelbarrows and into the trunks of battered cars.

The United States and Britain have threatened war with Iraq, saying it has not rid itself of weapons of mass destruction and isn't co-operating with UN inspectors trying to make sure it has.

The inspectors are trying to verify Iraq's claims that it no longer holds such weapons.

Britain and the US are expected to introduce a new UN resolution next week, clearing the way for military action. Britain's UN ambassador, Jeremy Greenstock, said the resolution will contain a deadline "explicitly or implicitly" for Baghdad to show it is actively co-operating with the weapons inspections.

However, one veto-wielding UN Security Council member, Russia, said that UN weapons inspectors were being pushed to provide a pretext for war.

"Strong pressure is being exerted on international inspectors to provoke them to discontinue their operations in Iraq ... or to pressure them into coming up with assessments that would justify the use of force," Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov told reporters in Moscow.

In their last assessment of Iraqi cooperation, on February 14, chief inspector Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the UN nuclear control agency, told the Security Council they detected improvement in Iraq's co-operation with them.

That, combined with huge anti-war demonstrations around the world, gave hope to Iraq's government that the United States and Britain were becoming increasingly isolated and that those countries might not find enough support to wage war.

For now, weapons inspectors have given few indications that Iraq's co-operation has improved since he last appeared.