"The desperate bid by the US administration to establish a connection between Iraq and al-Qaida is part of a policy to find an excuse to launch an offensive against Iraq," said Salem al-Qubaissi, head of an Iraqi parliamentary committee on international affairs.

The Americans insisted that a message broadcast by the Arabic-language Al-Jazeera satellite television network and believed to have come from bin Laden was clear proof of al-Qaida's links with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

The speaker called on Muslims to launch suicide attacks and defend Iraq against a possible US onslaught.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the tape proved bin Laden and al-Qaida backed Saddam. "He threatens everybody in the Arab world except Saddam Hussein, he says he wants to fight with Saddam Hussein," Boucher told Al-Jazeera. "This does confirm that bin Laden and Saddam Hussein seem to find common cause together."

But Qubaissi said the United States had mobilized the full range of its security services to find a link between Iraq and al-Qaida, "but they have failed."

He maintained that such accusations were "designed to deceive US public opinion, which rejects any aggression, and world opinion, which is beginning to understand US plans for Iraq."

Baghdad has repeatedly denied it has any ties to al-Qaida and ruling Baath Party official Saad Qassem Hammudi described the US attempt to connect Iraq and terrorism as "a diversionary tactic to hide the failure of the US and British governments to prove that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction." The audiotape warned Muslims against cooperating with the United States against Iraq, saying any who did would be considered to have abandoned their faith.

"All those who cooperate with the Americans against Iraq are hostile to Islam," it said.

Elsewhere, diplomats were gearing up for a crucial United Nations (UN) Security Council meeting tomorrow, when members will hear the latest report by chief weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei.

France, Russia and China want strengthened inspections to determine if Iraq has banned nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

The Americans dismissed as a "diversion" a French proposal for more intrusive arms inspections, but Iraq's UN Ambassador Mohammed al-Douri welcomed the French initiative as "courageous."

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov insisted yesterday that war was still not inevitable.

"We must do everything to ensure that the international coalition against terrorism is not broken. Our joint declaration is not a challenge thrown down to America, but an invitation to act together to find a way out of the political crisis," he told France's Le Figaro newspaper.

(China Daily February 13, 2003)