Israel set for high alert

ISRAELI media reported the country would go on high alert from January 15 in anticipation that hostilities would erupt in the month following January 27, date of a report to the UN Security Council

Israel is worried Saddam will respond to any US strike by firing missiles at it, armed with chemical or biological warheads.

Some 1,000 US troops are expected in Israel this week for an exercise involving US-made Patriot missiles, which were largely ineffective in intercepting the 39 Scud missiles that Iraq fired at Israel in the 1991 Gulf War.

UN experts in Iraq pursued their hunt for banned arms yesterday. Iraqi officials said sites searched by the inspectors included a space research centre in Baghdad.

The US is forging ahead with a build-up that may see more than 100,000 troops in the region in January or February.

A British Defence Ministry source said the United States and Britain were planning a major invasion of Iraq through its short stretch of Gulf coastline as the first stage in any ground war.

The New York Times said US intelligence agents were working with Kurdish groups in northern Iraq opposed to Saddam.

In Baghdad, Saadi said US questions over whether Iraq had disclosed its efforts to obtain uranium from South Africa or Niger had already been discussed in talks with Blix.

He said he told the two men Iraq tried to obtain uranium oxide, not uranium itself, from Niger in the mid-1980s but never tried to get such material from South Africa. Uranium oxide, the mineral form in which uranium is usually found, can be used after enrichment in a nuclear reactor. For a bomb, the oxide would have to be purified and made into a gas.