'The day of reckoning is coming', says Bush

US President George W. Bush warned Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein yesterday that his "day of reckoning is coming", saying there was little evidence he would disarm peacefully.

"For 11 long years the world has dealt with him, and now he's got to understand his day of reckoning is coming and therefore he must disarm voluntarily," Bush told reporters at his Crawford, Texas, ranch. "Saddam Hussein, hopefully he realises we're serious.

"He is a man who likes to play games and charades, and ... the first indication isn't very positive that he will voluntarily disarm," Bush said.

The State Department kept up the same message. Saddam must either "change his ways or change his venue," said spokesman Richard Boucher.

Boucher said he was not aware of moves to negotiate exile for the Iraqi leader. "At this point, if it's an option he has, he ought to be smart enough to take it."

About a dozen Arab writers and lawyers plan to appeal to the Arab world to put pressure on the Iraqi President to step down to avert a war.

"We call upon public opinion in the Arab world to exercise pressure for the dismissal from power of Saddam Hussein and his close aides in order to stop a war that threatens catastrophe for the people of the region," said a copy of the appeal, obtained by Reuters.

"The immediate resignation of Saddam, whose rule over three decades has been a nightmare for Iraq and the Arab world, is the only way around further violence," it reads.

The appeal - made by lawyers and writers fed up with their governments' opposition to US policy on Iraq without presenting an alternative - also calls for the stationing across Iraq of international human rights monitors to oversee a transition to democratic rule.

Meanwhile the troop build-up continues. The United States has about 64,000 troops in the Gulf, according to US Defence Department officials, and another 25,000 troops will be added in coming weeks.

The new deployments will involve mainly the army's 3rd Infantry Division in Fort Stewart, Georgia, and squadrons of air force F-15 fighters and B-1 bombers.

But additional deployment orders are expected to go out as the United States steps up pressure on Iraq.

"Over the next several weeks you are going to see a steady force buildup," said a defence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Some of it will be visible. Some you'll miss."

The US Army meanwhile announced it was bringing together commanders of key combat divisions for a battle exercise in Germany this month under Lieutenant General William Wallace, who would likely lead ground forces in any war against Iraq.

In Iraq UN weapons experts searched six suspect sites yesterday, including a former uranium enrichment facility and an air force site, in the hunt for Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction. A senior Iraqi official said five weeks of intrusive UN inspections had proved baseless US allegations that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction.

General Hussam Mohammad Amin said UN inspectors had visited 230 sites since they returned to the country on November 27 and had found nothing incriminating.

"All those activities prove that the Iraqi declarations are credible and the American allegations are baseless. They are lying for political reasons," he said.

"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 January 27.

In his Texas press conference, Bush also said he expected the Korean Peninsula to be "nuclear-weapons free" and hinted that allies were working quietly to pressure North Korea to halt its arms programme.

Bristling at the suggestion that Washington's friends were reluctant partners in isolating and containing Pyongyang, Bush told reporters: "They may be putting pressure on and you just don't know about it.

"I know they're not reluctant when it comes to the idea of nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula," he said. "And we are in constant contact with the Japanese and the South Koreans and the Chinese and the Russians."

Senior officials from the United States, Japan and South Korea will meet in Washington on Monday and Tuesday to co-ordinate their strategy toward North Korea's nuclear plans, said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.

South Korea and China apparently agreed yesterday to use diplomacy to defuse the showdown over North Korea's drive to acquire nuclear weapons. South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Tae-shik, who met Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi, was believed to have urged China to use its influence.

Both sides were tight-lipped afterwards. A Chinese Foreign Ministry statement said only that the two sides exchanged views "on bilateral relations and common concerns on North Korea nuclear issues." But South Korean officials said they had agreed to use diplomacy to try to end the crisis.

A US official said Washington planned to continue humanitarian food shipments to North Korea in the new year, adding: "We don't use food as a political weapon." The United States has 37,000 troops in the South. The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, whose inspectors left North Korea on Tuesday after being ordered out, said its board of governors would receive a report on the issue on January 6.

- AGENCIES

Herald feature: Iraq