WASHINGTON/BAGHDAD, 30 December 2002 — The United States plans to secure Iraqi oil fields if it invades and is looking into the possibility of ramping up oil production beyond the UN oil-for-food program to pay for post-war reconstruction, Bush administration officials said yesterday.

“The oil fields are the property of the Iraqi people,” US Secretary of State Colin Powell told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“And if the coalition forces go into those oil fields, we would want to protect those fields and make sure they are used to benefit the people of Iraq and are not destroyed or damaged by the failing regime on the way out the door,” he said.

Powell warned that the standoff with Iraq cannot “go on indefinitely” and Washington was positioning itself to take action.

“I think that this can’t go on indefinitely,” Powell said, adding the United States would wait to get additional reports from UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix before taking any decisions. “It’s a situation we are monitoring closely,” he said. “We are positioning ourselves.

In another development, an AFP journalist on the scene reported yesterday Turkish troops were on the move near the border with Iraq and are now very close to the only regular crossing point between the two nations. A first convoy of around 80 to 90 Turkish army vehicles arrived near the border crossing of Habur in southeastern Turkey on Saturday while others arrived yesterday, the correspondent said.

Meanwhile, US and British warplanes yesterday attacked two Iraqi military radar sites after Iraqi forces moved the facilities into the southern “no-fly” zone, the US military said.

The US Central Command, which oversees military operations in the region, said Western warplanes used precision-guided weapons to target the Iraqi facilities near Ad Diwaniyah, about 75 miles south of Baghdad.

An unidentified plane flew over Baghdad at midday (0900 GMT) yesterday, apparently breaking the sound barrier over the Iraqi capital, in the second such incident in a month. A loud bang, probably the noise of the aircraft breaking the sound barrier, was heard across Baghdad, where residents are already bracing for a possible US strike.

UN arms experts, meanwhile, searched three suspect sites in Iraq yesterday. More than 100 UN weapons inspectors are now in Iraq, but the 200 searches they have carried out since Nov. 27 have apparently uncovered no trace of the chemical, biological or nuclear weapons programs Washington insists Iraq is pursuing.

In Cairo, a top representative of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) said all Gulf states “oppose any military action against” Iraq and favor a diplomatic solution to the showdown over its alleged weapons of mass destruction. (Agencies)