LONDON/BAGHDAD, 3 January 2003 — After the US military ordered more than 11,000 desert-trained troops to begin heading to the Gulf, US and British forces are in or near the Middle East and could be used in any US-led attack on Iraq. They are within striking distance of Iraq.

As the US troop buildup reaches final stage, US President George W. Bush told reporters in Crawford, Texas, yesterday he was “hopeful” of averting a war with Iraq but warned Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein that “his day of reckoning” is looming.

“I am hopeful we won’t have to go to war,” Bush told reporters, adding: “Let’s leave it at that until Saddam Hussein makes up his mind to disarm.”

In Baghdad, UN weapons experts searched six suspect sites yesterday, including a former uranium enrichment facility and an air force site as a senior Iraqi official said five weeks of intrusive UN inspections had proved that US allegations about Iraq developing weapons of mass destruction were baseless.

Gen. Hussam Mohammad Amin said UN inspectors had visited 230 sites since they returned to the country on Nov. 27 and had found nothing incriminating. “The inspectors did not find any prohibited activities or prohibited items in those 230 sites that have been visited till now,” said Amin, the chief Iraqi official liaising with UN inspectors.

Amin confirmed that chief UN inspector Hans Blix would visit Baghdad in the third week of January, before he reports back to the Security Council on Jan. 27.

He said the visit was “a positive indication on the road to removing any difficulties and implementing Security Council resolutions.”

A UN spokesman said teams from the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) drove yesterday to six sites in central and northwest Iraq.

Iraq, meanwhile, urged the world yesterday to stand up to the United States in 2003, lambasting Washington for forging ahead with its preparations for war despite Baghdad’s cooperation with UN arms inspectors.

Turkey, where a new opinion poll showed overwhelming opposition to a possible US war on Iraq, said it was sending a minister to Baghdad next week as part of Ankara’s efforts to help bring about a peaceful resolution to the crisis over Iraqi disarmament.

Iraq’s official press called on countries of the world to form a united front against the “imperialist” policies of the United States in 2003. The United States is continuing preparations for its “war of aggression” against Iraq despite the fact that Baghdad is cooperating with UN arms inspectors, Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz said yesterday. UN experts, who arrived in Iraq on Nov. 25, have been able to visit all the sites they have wanted to inspect and “will visit whatever sites they want to visit,” Aziz said. Despite that fact, the “American military deployment has been going on ... They continue their preparation for a war of aggression,” Aziz said.

Finalizing its troop buildup, the United States has ordered the carrier Abraham Lincoln to remain at sea instead of returning to the United States from a recently completed six-month tour near Iraq. The carrier Constellation is now on patrol in the Gulf and the Harry S. Truman is on station in the Mediterranean. The George Washington, which returned to Norfolk, Virginia, from the Gulf on Dec. 20, is likely to return to the region with either the Abraham Lincoln or Kitty Hawk, which is based in Japan.

An official at Port Said in Egypt said the US Navy destroyer USS Briscoe arrived yesterday in this Mediterranean port and was due to sail through the Suez Canal to the Red Sea today. The final destination of the ship was not known. About 800 US troops from the US Army’s German-based V Corps have received orders to deploy to the Gulf region, an army spokesman said. The troops were from military engineering, intelligence and communications units, said Lt. Col. Joe Richards, a spokesman for the V Corps in Heidelberg, Germany. (Agencies)